Search This Blog

De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Sunday, September 22, 2013

One Year to Go: The Scottish Vote That Will Shape Britain's Future

By Michael Keating
A year away from the Scottish referendum, we have opinion polls almost weekly, as the media tries to discern the rise and fall in the standings of the rival teams. Yet the most striking fact is the stability in public opinion. For the past 20 years, support for independence has been around 30% and all the argument over the past two years appears to have made little difference.
Such fluctuations as the media find are mostly due to the precise wording of the question (although we now have the actual question, which is usually used); random error; and the context in which the question is posed.
As John Curtice has noted, a recent poll showing the Yes side almost level came out of a poll in which respondents had previously been asked their opinion of the Scottish government, which remains remarkably popular. Some recent pollshave suggested a decline in Don’t Knows, to the benefit of the No camp, but even this is not consistent.
The past six months have seen a barrage from the No campaign (Better Together), with a series of papers on a range of policy issues and almost daily statements. These range from the serious through the banal and trivial to the misleading and the irrelevant. It scored some points on the question of the currency and the SNP’sproposal to continue to use Sterling after independence....To Read More....

No comments:

Post a Comment