The Daily Mail have released that rare thing, a Scotland-wide poll with a 1,000+ sample size.
It has been a long while since the last one but it seems the SNP has taken a bit of a hit on a number of scores and it's difficult to shake off the suggestion that some of this is due to the Al-Megrahi decision.
'Post hoc ergo propter hoc' and all that, just because one thing follows another it doesn't necessarily mean they are related, correlation does not always equate to causation, so one has to make one's own mind up on this. Anyway, here are the numbers:
On independence, only 28% are said to back it (no indication what the wording of the question was)
On Holyrood voting intentions, we have:
SNP - 33% (-5)
Lab - 31% (-1)
Con - 16% (+3)
LD - 16% (+4)
There was a Westminster voting question which, worryingly, has the SNP on a rather light 25%. No other figures seem to be known yet.
Crucially, on the question of the Al-Megrahi release, 42% said the release was correct and 51% said the release was wrong.
Split by party, Lib Dems were 57% in favour, Labour 39% and Tories 30%. Once again, Tavish Scott is looking like he is facing in the wrong direction on this issue but at least Gray and Goldie have their members behind them.
This comes on the back of a poll of Scottish lawyers, where almost 70% of these more learned individuals agreed with the Justice Secretary's decision.
The silver lining surrounding all of this is, if the slight dip in the SNP's fortunes is off the back of the Al-Megrahi decision, it should correct itself fairly soon as the story blows over.
Then again, this could give the unionist parties the impetus to kick on and put a no-confidence motion to the Parliament next week in seeking Kenny MacAskill's resignation which would surely force an election.
With this, there is a warning in the YouGov poll. Although 51% of people disagree with Kenny's decision, only a third wish to see him resign so the criticism is not as fierce as it could have been.
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18 comments:
There will be another YouGov poll asking practically the same questions released soon (possibly over the weekend, more likely next week).
A Daily Mail poll produces anti-SNP result? Now there's a surprise!
Shockaroonee, the Lib Dems vote increases.
That alone should throw doubt on the poll.
I always thought shockeroonee had a y in it but then again I also thought Liberal Democrat had a why in it so, yeah. Great to know there's another YouGov poll coming out. And the wording of this one will be interesting to see.
Nice to get an update, wait for the bounce - and the Daily Mail? More like Hello magazine if you look at it's online content. The comments aren't up to much either!
Polls, I never take heed of any!
Does that make me a bad person...I hope not.
Crazy D
the media has been anti snp so until the truth comes out from christine grahame under parliamentary privilege we can expectt that the official version that people made statemnets and chnaged their mind due to the facts and not because uncle sam paid them millions of dollars.
gauci still in oz is he not, worth an interview or is he ducking for cover now the truth is out.
maybe mad dog maddox can fly out and get some facts; that will be a first for him.
the timer that framed megrahi was supposed to come from a company that was offered 4 mill to say they did supply it to libya. the problem was they did not. and another guy who claimed the danegeld admitted it years later.
it all points to a link between iran/syria and the palestinians, not surprising after the yanks shot down an iranuan airliner thinking it was a bomber, and the mad guy who did it was given a medal for his troubles.
No chance of a no confidence motion in either KMacA . Salmond has made it clear that were such a motion passed, he would view it as a no confidence in the regime as a whole and resign. The other parties would themn have to try and cobble a regime together (they couldn't).. that would mean an election. Today's poll notwithstanding the other parties can't afford an election (financially or politically). The Lib Dems might piously put down a motion .. but only on the sure andd certain knowledge that it wouldn't pass.
Considering the press coverage I thought we might have taken a bigger hit.
Pretty even really. Anyway, should policies follow polls? After after the talk of justice and morality, isn't that the wrong way to look at it?
Agree with bucket, let's face it, the decision wasn't with popularity in mind.
My gut feeling is the split on the Megrahi decision aint that bad given the great unwashed's hanging and flogging propensities and that the direction of travel for public opinion is towards MacAskill's position.
But that's just me, a bourgeois, SNP inclined soft leftie.
Various other polls have shown public to be very supportive.
Dumfries Standard 85.8%; Kilmarnock Standard 81.5%; Hamilton Advertiser 67.3% and Oban Times 91%... so the Daily Mail figures are a bit of a surprise. Then again, I doubt anyone believes anything they read in the Daily Mail.
(I pinched these poll findings from "The Universality of Cheese blog, with apologies to Montague Burton.)
As Bucket and Monty have said, the decision wasn't made to court popularity. It was made because it was the right and legal thing to do.
...and 77% in West Lothian Courier.
I think the West Lothian Courier one reflects the opinion of the local bloggers, the figure looks vaugely familiar.
Interesting take on the Lib Dems though. Obviously I've only had a small sample myself to get opinion off, and that is varied. May have to dust off my father's old head boy page.
The local polls surely are so unscientific they can be discounted. Do they let people vote twice? That alone is enough to disregard them surely?
YouGov is the daddy of the polling world. There is something suspicious in there being so little detail included in the news story but 42/51 isn't so hard to believe as much I'd like it to be the other way around...
The West Lothian Courier poll doesn't allowed double voting - at least not from the same IP address.
Of course these polls are unscientific but they do help gauge the direction of travel as those that are motiviated to vote will be those that try to influence other peoples' views.
As for the YouGov poll, until we see exactly how their questions were phrased and ordered it must also be regarded as unscientific.
For example, the simple ordering of the questions when such an emotive issue as Megrahi is involved will have a significant bearing on how any given respondent answers other questions.
If someone who doesn't agree with the decision but who tends to vote SNP is asked this question first;
Do you agree the SNP Justice Secretary was right or wrong to release Megrahi?
Then his answer to this next question;
Which party would you vote for at the next election?
is suddenly compromised by our instict to appear consistent (and therefore credible) under interrogation.
Asking these questions the other way round might, in fact, result in the opposite answers being given in this situation.
I would say that YouGov tracking polls are usually the most accurate but these polls do not mix emotive subjective matter with asking party prefences.
I'm taking a big pinch of salt with this because my own experience is that there are very few people who really take issue with MacAskill's decision.
Vis a vis Al Megrahi.
In the visceral world of darkest Ayrshire 'pub-land', there is almost unanimity:
Hang him, then kick him in the b*lls, then put him back in jail.
I'm afraid I was the only one in a rather heated pub discussion to see any other possibility.
Jeff of course the local polls are unscientific. However, they often fly in the face of the editorial stance which is usually of the herd mentality. They also encourage the neutral to get involved. Besides, just how many browsers and computers do each of us have, clearing your cache out just to keep clicking your own preference.
The best poll I've come across is way beyond yougov. A survivor of Sherwood Crescent (who was picking body parts out of his drain pipes for months after) was at a meeting in Lockerbie on Monday night, he threw out the Megrahi release to the room and asked what the general view was. 11 out of 12 agreed it was the right decision and none of them thought Megrahi completely guilty. The only person to go down the hang him route was three years old when the plane blew up.
Also, as I'd forgotten, re polls. There is a great difference in not only presenting the question but also how you present the subject. The Dumfries Standard settled for 'Lockerbie Bomber' whereas others went for the full name, which is too long to type here...
Incidentally, there is a turf war going on right now, with our lovely Labour supporters hitting www.annandaleobserver.co.uk to disagree. You know what to do.
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