EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: The final Panelbase numbers of the Sturgeon era show the Yes vote unchanged at a very solid 48%, with pro-independence parties still on course for a majority at the next Scottish Parliament election

So there can be no guarantee – far from it – that the state of play in public opinion three weeks ago still represents the state of play now.  However, the value of these results is twofold.  Firstly, they come from – as far as I’m aware – the final Panelbase poll to be conducted during the Nicola Sturgeon era, and therefore offer us a useful baseline from which to measure progress or decline under Humza Yousaf.  And secondly, they very helpfully give the lie to some disgracefully misleading reporting that appeared in the mainstream media at around the time the poll was conducted about the trend on independence support.

In the context of the time, those are strikingly good numbers.  They represent a ‘statistical tie’, meaning that the standard margin of error makes it impossible to be completely sure whether Yes or No are in the lead.  With Don’t Knows excluded, they represent no change at all from the previous Panelbase poll conducted in the first half of February on behalf of Believe in Scotland, a fact that is impossible to reconcile with the hysterical claims from many commentators (yes, Malcolm Clark, I’m looking at you), that independence support was in “freefall” a few weeks ago.  With Don’t Knows left in, there’s even a one-point increase in Yes support.  And the 48% headline number for Yes is only four points lower than Panelbase reported during the peak of the mini-surge in independence support late last year after the Supreme Court ruling.

Incidentally, the “freefall” claims were self-evidently baseless even before this poll is added into the mix.  The YouGov poll that was so misleadingly reported as showing a drop in Yes support to “39%” actually showed an unchanged position since the previous YouGov poll in February of Yes 46%, No 54% with Don’t Knows excluded – so exactly the same static trend reported by Panelbase.  The Survation poll showing a drop in Yes support to 45% was a bit disappointing, but it’s strongly rumoured that the result was offset only a few days later by another Survation poll for the Scotch Whisky Association showing Yes back up to a very healthy 49%.  (I’m not sure if anyone ever got to the bottom of those rumours.)  And it was within this calendar month that the Find Out Now poll I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop showed an outright Yes lead: Yes 52%, No 48%.  So I’m struggling to detect even the remotest trace of “freefall” in any of that.

The party political voting intentions in this new Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll are somewhat less encouraging, but in a strange way there may be good news baked into that bad news, because it may indicate that SNP support and Yes support are not as tightly linked as we think.  That raises the possibility that independence support may prove fairly resilient even if Humza Yousaf leads the SNP to election defeat next year.

These figures also won’t come as a massive surprise to anyone, because they’re broadly in line with what other firms were showing at the time the poll was conducted.

So the SNP are projected to just about retain their majority position among Scottish MPs at Westminster.  But when the national vote shares are close, first-past-the-post starts to work firmly in Labour’s favour, meaning that even the smallest further slippage for the SNP would put them at severe risk of losing their majority or even being overtaken by Labour in terms of seats – hence my major concerns about the potential impact of Humza Yousaf’s personal unpopularity.

Amidst a fair bit of carnage for the SNP, the remarkable fact is that this poll is still pointing to a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament, albeit only just.  The SNP and Greens combined reach the magic figure of 65 seats, while the unionist parties in combination have only 64.  In practice, I suspect it might be a touch better than that for the pro-indy side, because the 6% for the Greens on the constituency ballot looks oddly high, and in the real world a chunk of those voters would probably go to the SNP.

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