Tag Archives: Yes vote

Will the polls get the Scottish referendum right?

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As the Scots goes to the polls Anthony Wells considers to what extent we can expect the outcome to match the predictions.

The Scottish polls at the end of last week and the weekend were broadly clustered around a small No lead. Perhaps a more likely route to a YES victory is if the polls are underestimating the level of YES support for some reason. Over the last couple of days I’ve seen several blogs or articles pondering whether the polls could be wrong, could they be underestimating YES or NO?

It would be hubris to suggest the polls couldn’t be wrong. Obviously they can. At most elections there are polls that perform better or worse than their peers, some of that is better methodology. When the polls are close most is probably just normal sample variation. That’s a matter for another time though, here I’m pondering more about the possibly that all the polls are wrong, the potential for a systemic bias with everyone a bit too yes or a bit too no. This is possible too – think of the way all polls overestimated Lib Dem support in 2010, or most famously how all the polls overestimated Labour support in 1992. How likely is that?

The Scottish referendum is a bigger challenge for pollsters than an election would be because it’s a one-off. In designing methodology for voting intention the experience of what worked or didn’t work at previous elections weighs heavy, and most companies’ weighting schemes rely heavily upon the previous election – if not directly through weighting by recalled vote, in using the data from the previous election in designing and testing other weighting targets. For a referendum you can’t take that direct approach, pollsters needed to rely more on modelling what they think is an accurate picture of the Scottish electorate and hoping it reflects the Scottish people well enough that it will also reflect their referendum voting intentions – it’s complicated because Scotland has a complicated electorate. Scottish voters have two Holyrood votes and a Westminster vote, and they use them all in different ways with different political loyalties. Within the space of a year Scotland managed to be a Labour stronghold at Westminster and to produce a SNP landside at Holyrood – using either election alone for weighting gives a rather different picture of what the Scottish electorate are like, even though you are trying to model the same population. Different companies have arrived at different methods of political weighting to deal with the issue – Survation, ICM and TNS weight by Holyrood recalled voted alone, YouGov weight by Holyrood recalled vote with a nod towards 2011 Holyrood voters who backed Labour in 2010, Opinium weight by Holyrood and Westminster recalled vote, Panelbase weight by Holyrood and European recalled vote, Ipsos MORI don’t use political weighting at all. Despite the variance they have all converged to produce the same sort of result, and that gives me some confidence – if there was a particular skew from being online or from using Holyrood recalled vote we would expect to see different results.

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What follows the referendum: negotiating Scottish independence, or delivering Devo More

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Earlier this year Alan Trench gave a lecture at the University of Ulster’s Belfast campus about what might follow the vote in the Scottish referendum. In this article, he picks out the key points.

The full speech is available on the Social Science Research Network here, or can be downloaded directly here. 

Perhaps the most important and novel part of the lecture is where I map out what would follow a Yes vote – the sort of steps needed, particularly on the rUK side to tackle the many uncertainties that will follow. This is a separate issue from that of the strengths of each party in the negotiation (discussed here earlier in the week).  This would call for a great deal of imaginative thinking, in the midst of a first-order constitutional crisis. In particular, it seems to me that:

  • The negotiating process needs to move with all due speed, to preserve the democratic legitimacy of both rUK as well as an independent Scotland. There is no good reason for rUK to seek to prolong the process, and plenty of reasons for it not to.
  • The 2015 UK General election presents grave problems for that – the time lost to campaigning in an election and briefing a possible incoming new government means it will be impossible to make a proper start in negotiations before June 2015, since even provisional agreements reached under the present government might lack support from the new one.
  • One option – which appears to be gaining some support, particularly among Conservatives– is to postpone the 2015 election. But the present government has already been in office for 4½ years, and has no mandate to negotiate something so important to rUK as Scottish independence.
  • A better option would therefore be to hold a general election early, before the end of 2014, so there was both certainty about the composition of the UK/rUK Government and that government had a political mandate for independence negotiations. This would need approval by a two-thirds majority in the Commons, under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

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10 things you need to know about what will happen if Scotland votes Yes

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As the Scottish independence referendum draws closer the outcome is hard to predict. Both Westminster politicians and the wider public are asking what – in practical terms – would happen if the Scots were to vote Yes. Robert Hazell offers a 10-point overview of what the road to independence might look like.

 

The timetable

1. Scotland will not immediately become independent. On the SNP’s proposed timetable, it would take 18 months for Scotland to achieve independence, in March 2016, just in time for the next elections to the Scottish Parliament in May 2016. In that 18 month period there will need to be intensive negotiations on all the issues listed in point 5 below, and more.

2. This 18 month timetable ignores two potential difficulties. The first is the UK general election in May 2015. That will require a pause in the negotiations of at least two months while the UK team of negotiators campaign in the Westminster election. A change of government in the UK will result in new negotiating teams, who will need time to get up to speed.

3. The second difficulty is the need for legislation. There might be a need for paving legislation at the start of the negotiations. Legislation will also be needed at the conclusion to grant Scotland independence on the terms which have been agreed. On many issues Alex Salmond wants a partnership or sharing arrangement with the UK (sterling being the most notable example). That will need to be given effect in legislation, along with the division of all the main assets and liabilities of the UK state. The legislation will be big and complex, and some of it will be controversial. There may need to be several bills rather than one omnibus bill. The legislation is likely to take a year or more to be passed by Westminster. For comparison, the Scotland Act 1998 took 11 months to pass, but in very favourable circumstances and with a huge government majority.

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Scottish Referendum looks close, politicians panic and markets tumble. What if Scotland really does vote Yes?

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Following Alan Renwick’s piece (posted on this blog yesterday) suggesting Scotland could buck the referendum trend and vote Yes, Robert Hazell explores reactions to increasing uncertainty over the outcome and considers the implications of a Yes vote.

The Scottish independence referendum is now two weeks away, on 18 September. With the latest YouGov poll showing the No campaign’s lead narrowing, to just 53% against 47% it suddenly looks as though there is a real possibility that Scotland might vote for independence in two weeks’ time. This has caused panic at Westminster, it has spooked the markets, and it has finally got people south of the border thinking about the consequences, for Scotland and the rest of the UK.

First, the panic at Westminster. On 4 September the Guardian ran the remarkable story ‘PM could face calls to postpone UK election if Scots vote for independence’. The argument being advanced by some Conservatives was that Westminster should postpone the next UK election by 12 months in order to avoid the unstable prospect of a Labour government dependent on Scottish MPs, who would disappear part way through the next Parliament. The Guardian reported that

‘Well placed members of the government have already started to consult the laws on postponing elections. An Act of Parliament would have to be passed, but there are complicating factors. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, which stipulated that the next general election would take place on 7 May 2015, would have to be repealed. The House of Lords would also be able to block the legislation … One former law officer said: “Parliament can change elections, it can do what it likes. But it would be difficult.”’

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Could Scotland buck the trend and vote Yes?

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The polls have been narrowing in Scotland’s independence referendum debate. Reading’s referendums expert Alan Renwick reflects here on whether the Yes campaign really could pull off an unexpected victory.

I wrote a piece for the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago pointing out that, if Scotland’s voters follow the patterns seen in most referendums around the world, they will vote No to independence on 18th September. The polls have consistently shown a lead for No. And opinion generally shifts in the direction of the status quo in the final stage of a referendum campaign.

Since then, however, the polls seem to have shown the reverse pattern: opinion seems to be shifting towards Yes, not No. So what is going on? Could Scotland really buck the trend?

The short answer to that is, yes, of course Scotland could buck the trend – it’s only a trend. While opinion generally shifts towards the status quo in the weeks before polling day, there are also exceptions. The evidence that we have so far certainly doesn’t show that Scotland definitely will buck the trend – the polls could easily shift again. Indeed, headlines about a narrowing of their lead are exactly what No campaigners need to mobilise their supporters and remind voters that this is not a game.

But what are the mechanisms at play here? Are there plausible mechanisms that could generate a shift towards Yes in these final weeks and an unexpected win for supporters of independence? Ever since I first wrote on this subject back in January, I have argued that there are two key mechanisms to consider: reversion point reversal and the anti-establishment bandwagon.

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