Many thanks to a commenter on the previous thread for pointing out that YouGov’s poll is not the only one that has newly appeared – there’s also one from Survation, and it shows a radically different trend.
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation, 1st-7th February 2023)
Yes 49% (+2)
No 51% (-2)
Probably the most important point about these numbers is that they pose a tremendous credibility problem for the people who were indulging in fairly wild propaganda about the big drop for Yes in the Ashcroft poll and claiming that it showed Nicola Sturgeon had destroyed the independence cause or set it back decades, etc, etc. As I pointed out in my own post about the Ashcroft poll, when you just have one poll showing something surprising and out of the ordinary, you really have to exercise a bit of caution and scepticism until and unless some corroborating evidence appears. And here we have a timely demonstration of the reason for that – a poll with fieldwork that partly overlapped with the Ashcroft poll, and partly took place later, and yet showing completely the opposite trend, with Yes bouncing back to a virtual tie.
As for the difference between Survation and the new YouGov poll, I don’t place too much importance on the fact that the YouGov fieldwork was a bit later than Survation’s, because nothing really happened in the interim that would have had much of a dramatic impact on public opinion. (Nicola Sturgeon didn’t announce her shock resignation until the YouGov fieldwork was almost over.) So the difference between the trends in the two polls may simply be margin of error noise.
Survation also have Westminster voting intention numbers that are markedly rosier for the SNP than YouGov’s are…
Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:
SNP 42% (-1)
Labour 29% (-)
Conservatives 18% (-)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-1)
Only statistically insignificant changes there, and no sign at all that Labour are about to storm into the lead.
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