Tuesday, April 9, 2013

TNS-BMRB poll : Decrease in opposition to independence

Doubtless the above headline will be seen as spin, but when we have Magnus Gardham and his ilk perpetually spinning in the opposite direction on behalf of the 'mainstream media', I'm not going to apologise for redressing the balance just slightly. (And the headline does have the virtue of being entirely accurate.) The latest TNS-BMRB poll on independence shows a partial reversal of the movements in the last poll by the same company, which had shown significant increases in both the Yes and the No vote, but with the Yes campaign benefiting slightly more.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 30% (-3)
No 51% (-1)


That breaks the solid pattern we have seen over recent months of all pollsters showing swings in favour of independence. However, the No lead remains four points lower than in the final TNS-BMRB poll of last year, suggesting that most of the recent pro-Yes swing has proved lasting.

According to Mr Gardham, the Yes campaign will be more disappointed than the No campaign by this poll. In the literal sense that may be true, given that the Yes vote has fallen slightly more than the No vote. On the other hand, the pronouncements of Magnus on this subject might also have just a tad more credibility if he hadn't ludicrously summarised the January TNS-BMRB poll (showing a five-point slump in the No vote and no change in the Yes vote) with the words "support for independence stalls".

You see, on Planet Gardham every poll is a "setback for the SNP".

4 comments:

  1. James, you seem to have been invaded by spam.

    The poll is margin or error stuff. I think back to the Feb 2011 opinion poll by the same polling organisation that showed a double digit lead for Labour. We all know what happenedthe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "James, you seem to have been invaded by spam."

    It's getting worse and worse. Subrosa contacted me by email a few months ago and suggested that I remove the word verification system for comments, because she hadn't had any problems with spam as a result of doing that on her blog. So I gave it a go, and to begin with the spam trap worked fine, but just recently it's been hopeless. I don't really want to put word verification back on, but I may have to if things carry on like this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hopefully you won't get much spam. Another Independence poll was part of a fairness question commissioned by the Greens was on an article at Wings over Scotland.

    the data is at this link

    http://www.panelbase.com/news/GreenPartyforpublication09042013.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heya just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the images aren't loading correctly. I'm not sure why
    but I think its a linking issue. I've tried it in two different internet browsers and both show the same results.

    My weblog - diets that work fast

    ReplyDelete