Contrasting Scottish polls
The SNP have today released the voting intention figures from a new YouGov poll that shows the SNP ahead in both votes. The topline figures for the constituency vote, with changes from the YouGov poll the SNP commissioned back in April are CON 14% (nc), LAB 29%(-1), LDEM 16%(-4), SNP 36%(+10), Others 6%.
On the region vote the topline figures, with changes from the April poll (though if I recall correctly the SNP didn’t release the figures at the time), are CON 15%(+2), LAB 26%(+2), LDEM 15%(-4), SNP 30%(+7), GRN 8%(-3), SSP 3%(-4), Solidarity 1%(+1).
The SNP project that these figures would translate into seats as SNP 49 (+23), LAB 36 (-14), Con 16 (-2), Lib Dems 17 (nc), GRN 6 (-1), SSP 1 (-5). I’m not quite sure how they have done this, using uniform swings at a regional and constituency level I get far fewer SNP seats - only 39 to Labour’s 38 - but Scottish politics is not my forte, so I may have made an error in the distribition of the top-up seats somewhere, or the SNP may have used regional swings or a turnout adjustment. If the SNP projections are correct then Labour and the Lib Dems would not be able to command a majority in the Scottish Parliament, even alongside the Greens.
However, as some people have noted, there is also a YouGov poll in the Scottish edition of the Daily Telegraph which has contrasting figures. The Telegraph figures are CON 15%, LAB 32%, LDEM 15%, SNP 32%, GRN 4%, SSP 1% in the constituency section and CON 17%, LAB 29%, LDEM 15%, SNP 28%, GRN 8%, SSP 2% in the regional vote. On these figures Labour would remain the largest party.
So why the difference? Strictly speaking the differences could just be sample error, but I think the differences are more likely to be a result of very subtle differences in the way the polls were conducted.
As I’ve said before, all reputable pollsters will put voting intention questions at the start of a poll to make sure other questions don’t skew the answers. Neither of these polls are an exception - there were no leading questions or suchlike in the SNP poll, it was perfectly legitimate. However, what happens when you’ve got more than one voting intention question? Unlike the SNP poll the Telegraph poll included a Westminster voting intention question, and that was asked before the Scottish Parliament question. Naturally Labour had a healthy lead in the Westminister voting intentions (LAB 36% to the SNP’s 25%, CON 18%, LDEM 16%) and I suspect people were more likely to say they were going to vote Labour in the Scottish Parliament if they’d just said they would in the Westminster Parliament.
The second difference was in the options given for minor parties. The Telegraph poll used YouGov’s normal formula, giving people the choice of the main 4 parties and “other”, with people who chose other then being given a further list of minor parties. The SNP poll was slightly different - the constituency poll gave the 4 main parties and other (though with no follow up question), but the regional question listed the Greens, SSP and Solidarity along with the main 4 parties. This appears to have boosted the minor parties’ support - 15% in the SNP poll compared to 12% in the Telegraph one (which one is the better approach is a difficult question. On the face of it it is fairer to list the smaller parties along with the big four but in practice it can result in too high a score for the small parties. YouGov’s over-rating of UKIP in the last European elections, for example, was because they were listed in the main question.)
A third difference was that the SNP poll asked a separate question up front of how likely people were to vote, while the Telegraph one just gave “would not vote” as an option along with the rest. This had the potential to make a big difference, but in practice it doesn’t seem to have. The proportions of non-voters in the two polls are pretty much the same.
So which figures are “correct”? Both are fair polls and neither are outlandish enought to look like an obvious rogue. The Westminister voting intention question in the Telegraph poll might well have skewed later answers slightly, as respondents like to give consistent answers. That said, the 36% figure for SNP support in the constituency section of the SNP poll does seem quite high, and it could be an outlier. Alas, in recent years we haven’t had solid series of Scottish polling data to be able to tell when a poll seems out of line and when it doesn’t. Hopefully as we move towards next years’ elections we will get more regular polls.
Filed under: Scotland, Voting Intention, YouGov
We should also have an ICM Scottish poll later this month .
Anthony,
I think the SNP poll may have had a boost effect from not giving options on “others”.
As you may know the Greens, SSP, and I presume Solidarity, aren’t going to stand FPTP candidates, so the Telegraph option is in effect giving people the chance to vote for candidates that won’t exist.
I suspect that’s why the SNP excluded the option as it would be particularly interested in where those green and SSP votes would go, as they were the biggest losers from the rise in SSP and Green representation in 2003.
Given that The SNP poll has the SNP 4% higher on FPTP than the Telegraph, and Labour 3% lower I suspect the truth is probably somewhere in between at 32-34% SNP, to 30-32% Labour, which is pretty much in line with ICM last month.
As to the seat predictions, unless there is a tipping point where once the gap gets to 6%+ a whole raft of FPTP seats start to fall it seems high to me too.
However as with the TNS poll how it is weighted to take account of likelyhood to vote could have an effect.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a lot of “games” being played with the Labour conference opening tommorrow, first Labour trumpet the TNS survey, then The SNP come out with an eve of conference spoiler.
An interesting part of the Telegraph survey is the question on Independence which shows far lower support tha the ICM poll.
The Telegraph phrases it not as” Independence v the UK”, but as “Independence v The Scottish Parliament” , which could give an indication as to why the Labour party is currently campaigning on constitutional arguements stopping the parliament doing it’s work.
The Telegraph questions on what people think are good arguments for and against Independence also makes interesting reading.
Peter.
Peter - not on the constituency question it won’t have. The YouGov question gives the other parties in a separate question on a new page that you only see if you click other, so in both the SNP and Telegraph polls people were given the options of Con, Lab, LDem, SNP and Other. Only if people clicked Other in the Telegraph poll did they get the choice of voting Green - people didn’t see the Green option until tehy’d already given their “main” voting intention. Hence, both polls got an indentical figure of 6%.
The regional vote was a different matter. There the Telegraph poll had “other” as the option, while the SNP poll had Green, SSP, Solidiarty or other. That did indeed produce higher figures for the other parties.
Anthony – it’s a small point. But according to my copy of the today’s Telegraph the Tories are on 16% on the first vote rather than 15%.
I think that the Conservatives will have a much better showing in the Holyrood and Regional Voting once a campaigning team is fully working and the election is coming closer.
Phil,
WHY?
Peter.
The Conservatives will do better in the election for two reasons and campaigning is not one of them: the first is that they are better at turnout, the other is that those who support unpopular right wing parties lie to pollsters.
The latter effect is named after a German academic whose name I now forget. Can someone in yougov please give me a reference to a source in English where I can read more about this phenomenon.
You are thinking of Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann - no immediately source springs to mind, but a google search on her name and “spiral of silence” will bring up plenty of stuff.
John,
The YouGov system of internet polling is thought by some to overcome the spiral of silence, as is in part filtering by likelyhood to vote ( I am not sure if yougov applies different factors for this depending on party or have figures from their polls on average likelyhood of voting by party, in theory they should be able to do so).
If we compare On line filtered by face to face unfiltered ie Yougov v TNS, then we get YouGov Con,14/14, TNS Con,12/9.
With this 2% and 5% difference it could be argued that the polls already give indications of the size of the “spiral of silence” in Scotland.
!In 2003 the Tories got 15.5/16.5, so a figure of 14/14, is probably within the margin of error and the question then is has the Tory vote for the Holyrood Parliament in the last four years gone up or down.
I tend to think that since 2003 the Tories have had a slight decline in support and no Cameron effect, so something like 15/15 isn’t unreasonable.
Peter.
Thaks to Andrew and Peter for that.
Future polling questions should explore underlying attitudes to the Scottish Parliament to enlighten our interpretation of results on such diverse matters as turnout, voting intention, split votes and independence.
Several years ago it was observed that there was a distinct difference in attitude to the parliament between those who had had some contact with it (they were were generally positive) and the others who had had no contact.
Since then, millions have passed through the building though not all of them were Scottish voters. This is due partly to the cost of the building and curiosity about its quality, as well as the passage of time, so the former group has increased and will eventually include the whole population.
This must have some effect, as will the spread of Broadband.
Have you ever made yeast with old fashioned yeast? On the surface it seems as if nothing much is happening and then, suddenly everything froths up.
There is a similar cumulative effect of a steady supply of situations where, in the words of an SNP constituency chairman in the Thatcher years “…. it would never happen in an independent Scotland” The war is big example but that detracts attention from the many little ones. The little ones mattter at least as much because they keep coming along.
I know that its late and I probably shouldn’t say this, but it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back that is the pebble that starts the avalanche.
The Scottish Parliament has four founding principles; it has a mechanisim to ensure that it reflects on how effectively it adheres to these principles. If Scottish history is any guide to the future, it will be on a matter of principle that the Union founders.
The Scottish parliament has had its successes, but its failures, if these are due to a lack of co-operation on the part of the responsible Westminster ministers (some of them Scottish MP’s) are more important. A good example of how different the issues are in Scotland and the strains that this puts on the Union, as well as how a Home Rule Parliament can speak on behalf of Scotland on reserved matters is at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-05/sor0922-02.htm
at Col 19370 and not least Kenny MacAskill (SNP) at Col 19383
“Compare and contrast ….” as they used to say in exam papers.
If the forthcoming anniversary of the Union marks the beginning of its end, Westminister ministers will be almost wholly to blame for not preventing it, and the SNP due scant praise for their marginal contribution.
Competition and Choice are concepts currently valued at Westminster, but unless the Westminster Parliament radically changes it may discover that it is an old and tired brand in competition with others.
51% today, 49% tomorrow. Its the long term trends that matter in the long term. The tide goes in and out, but it’s rising sea levels due to global warming that people need to worry about.
Still can’t figure out how the SNP predicts a fall in LibDem seats.
Compared to 2003 they are up from 12% to 15% in the list and static under FPTP, that means they can’t realistically under PR be expected to lose any seats and should actually gain some.
Peter.
If the SNP do win the most seats in the Scottish Parliament do you think that Scotland will withdraw from the UK through a referendum?
Danny,
The SNP even if the biggest party still need to get a referendum bill through the parliament and for that the will almost certainly need the LibDems to support it, and then we need to get a majority of the vote.
Actually I think it will be harder to get the referendum than to win it.
Peter.
For those interested the results in Victoria Australia show an historic 3rd win for the state Labour Government ( and strong Green polling). Worth noting that the Conservative Liberal Party have now lost 20 elections in a row in the various state and territory elections since Howard’s win in the Federal parliament. There is a strong system in federal countries where people vote against the main government in a local parliament and I suspect that may develop in Scotland and Wales (and England, if the logic of a federal system ever managed to occur - and to the person who said you cant have federal system as the parts wouldn’t be equal, do consider Australia- look at Tasmania versus Victoria / NSW).
Surely Yougov should stop the pretence of “minor parties” and list the Greens as an explicit choice in all of its polls. After all, the Greens are closer to the Tories in share of vote than the Tories are to Labour, so who decides which parties are “minor”. Get with the 21st century!
Phil, why? I’m an optimistic Conservative, but honestly Scotland is a write-off for us at the moment. Maybe not forever, but for the foreseeable future. Scotland will probably only get a large right-wing population again if it becomes independent and has to take responsibility for itself at last.
Gavin, why should the Greens be considered a “21st century” choice? Their supporters are a tiny minority who haven’t got even a single seat in the Commons. Winning a couple of councillors in Oxford doesn’t make a party mainstream.
The SNP Projection is nonsense (well, I am sure that they have found a way that it might happen but . . . ). The disproportionality between the votes and seats implies that the top-up simply gets swamped. It is probably statistically possible, but would require a very large number of odd-circumstances to appear in concert.
Philip Thompson.
The Greens have a fair smattering of MSPs (six I think), around the same as the SSP. If the SSP are included in the poll, then the Greens should be too. (And if we’re getting down to the question of ‘tiny minorities’, one could argue that the supporters of _any_ party are a minority.)
I have always thought that the conventional definition of minor was “under 10%”, so as an SNP member I’ve never had a problem with the SNP being seen as a “minor” party in UK terms.
Having said that if in Scotland the Greens break 10% and the Tories don’t, (both just possible but very unlikely) I don’t see the greens being promoted and the Tories relegated, so I suspect it’s more convention than a rule.
Peter.