Latest Scottish Polls
Almost a month since it was carried out the most recent YouGov poll for the SNP has been published on the YouGov website, I know some of my readers have been anxiously awaiting it!
The topline voting intention figures for Westminster are CON 18%, LAB 42%, LDEM 11%, SNP 27%. Compared to the last general election the Conservatives are up 2 points, Labour up 3 points, the Liberal Democrats down 12 points and the SNP up by 9 points. It was conducted between the 1st and 4th October. To put this is context, when this poll was conducted at the beginning of the month YouGov's GB polls were still showing a 4 point Labour lead. Overall the pattern here is pretty much the same as the GB polls were at the time, a small Conservative and Labour advance with the Lib Dems collapsing, the difference being the strong progess of the SNP. Since this poll was taken of course we've seen a reverse in the national opinion polls, so it seems likely that the picture will have changed in Scotland to and Labour may not be doing so well.
The approval ratings for the Scottish Executive remain positive, 60% thinking they are doing a good job and 27% a bad job. The same applies for Alex Salmond, with 63% saying good job (including a majority of supporters of all parties) and 25% bad job. No figures have been released for voting intention at Holyrood - I don't know if they were included, I haven't looked since if I did know I couldn't tell you anyway! This is a private poll for the SNP so while the methodology will be same as YouGov's normal methodology for Scottish poll and the figures that are released can be trusted, the SNP aren't obliged to publish findings they don't wish to.
Meanwhile some of the findings of the annual survey of Scottish Social Attitudes have been published. This is an annual academic study using a genuine random sample - a slow and expensive process, hence the fact it was carried out over several months between May and August 2007. Asked about Scotland's relationship with the UK they found only 23% in favour of complete independence, the lowest recorded since the SSA started asking the question in 1997 and down from 30% in 2006 and 35% in 2005.
The SNP responded to this poll by pointing to a more recent poll, published by TNS System Three in September (but carried out in August), that found 35% in support of Independence, claiming it showed a 12 point increase in support. This is somewhat disingenous, it could potentially be a better measure of Scottish sentiment, but it certainly doesn't show an increase in support for Independence, the two questions were entirely different.
The TNS poll asked people how they would vote in a referendum on Scottish Independence, using the wording that had been proposed in the SNP's white paper - it found 35% would vote "I AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state" and 50% would vote "I DO NOT AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state". The SSA survey gave the people the choice of complete independence, a Scottish Parliament with or without tax raising powers or no Scottish Parliament.
In short TNS were asking a straight referendum voting intention question, where people only had the two options of independence or not, while the SSA gave people the range of options.
TNS's question is obviously the right approach if you want to see how people might vote in a referendum tomorrow, but it is worded to reflect that, not to best elicit people's actual preference for the constitutional framework for Scotland. In fact, generally speaking you will always find a higher level of support in Scottish polls that ask "Independence yes or no" than in ones that ask "Independence, or the Scottish Parliament you've got at the moment"
