Here's an excellent film on the use of opinion polling in the referendum campaign. It features James Kelly of the Scotland Goes Pop site which provides by far the best, most informed and most up to date comment on the polls and polling evidence.
One of the intriguing aspects to the referendum campaign has been the wide variance in the results reported by the different polling companies: Panelbase, Survation and ICM reporting very different results to the outlying YouGov (though even YouGov recently reported a big swing to Yes). But there's also a further, specific oddity that I've seen some are beginning to comment on.
You may recall that we were all told by the London-based commentators from the outset that uniformly, unwaiveringly, in every referendum where data was available, there was always a move from the side proposing change to the side proposing maintaining the status quo. So, we were told by all commentators, there would certainly, inevitably be an increase in the No lead as we approached polling day. As sure as night follows day, said all those claiming to be experts. In fact, of course, the opposite is happening. The pollsters appear flummoxed.
I've a theory. It is that the pollsters have completely misunderstood the specific dynamic that operates in Scotland. On both sides of the debate, we already all see Scotland as a country. The "status quo" then is Scotland, as a country. Further, it is, frankly, of us using the subtle threat of voting for independence as a means of exacting more powers or some form of concession or protection from Westminster. Not pretty, but I think it's a fair summary of the relationship, politically. The crucial point is, whether we vote Yes or No, that is not on offer as a possible future. If we vote No, we can't threaten to vote Yes. That card will have been played and our bluff called. We've then lost the protection, the tool at our disposal, that we are all used to having. For ever. People get that. And, further, they get what it means for what would be likely to happen to the current settlement and the Barnett formula, particularly when they read the recent reports about the attitude of voters in England to what they see as the subsidy they give us.
This vote is, then, a choice of two futures, neither of which is the status quo. So, the question becomes, which of those two futures most closely matches the status quo? Where will the "conservative" (small "c") vote find shelter?
Counterintuitively perhaps, it's a Yes vote. There are two aspects to that. Firstly, a Yes vote affirms Scotland as a country. Secondly, that country will have within its own control the power to maintain things like the current level of investment in the NHS and so on. No need to rely on Westminster or the electorate in the rest of the UK. No need to fear a de facto Tory/UKIP alliance or even just Labour veering ever rightwards in the cause of electability. And, critically, this is a credible alternative to the current tool of threatening to vote for independence: we don't need that tool because things will be within our own control. Conversely, the future that a No vote would bring finally and irrevocably reduces Scotland to the status of a region. And, it ties us to an increasingly right-wing Britain as it heads out of Europe with no card to play, no tool to use. At the mercy of an electorate ten times our size.
What price that dystopian future as a cozy "status quo" refuge for the faint-hearted? Those who want to avoid it will vote Yes.
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