
A year since the Scottish referendum
Friday is the anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum, so we’ve had a flux of Scottish polls over the weekend from YouGov, Panelbase and Survation. They mostly covered the same ground – should there be another referendum and how would people vote, and how people will vote in the Holyrood election next year.
Should there be a second referendum?
In the Survation poll 43% of Scots wanted another referendum within five years, 36% said in five years or more time, 20% never. Panelbase found 36% wanted a referendum within five years, 55% did not.
In YouGov’s survey they didn’t ask a timing question, but asked a couple of questions on whether there should be a second referendum. 40% of people thought that a referendum should be a once in a generation event, and there shouldn’t be another for many years. 29% thought that a referendum should not necessarily be once in a generation, and there was no reason why there shouldn’t be another one soon. Inbetween those two groups were 24% of people who thought a referendum should be once in a generation…but that if circumstances change, an early second referendum could be the right thing to do. One potential such change could be the European referendum (15% of people told YouGov they didn’t support a second referendum, but would do if Britain voted to leave the EU), but the SNP could obviously seek to persuade Scots of the case for a second referendum because circumstances had changed in other ways.
How would people vote in a second referendum?
All three polls had very similar findings – people would still vote NO in a referendum tomorrow, but by a smaller margin than they did a year ago. Survation had figures of YES 49%, NO 51%, Panelbase had figures of YES 47%, NO 53%, YouGov had figures of YES 48%, NO 52%.
Holyrood elections
The main story across all three polls was again the same, and largely unexpected: the SNP are headed for another landslide victory in next year’s Holyrood election.
- Survation/Daily Mail had constituency shares of SNP 53%, LAB 22%, CON 14%, LD 6%. Regional shares were SNP 42%, LAB 21%, CON 13%, LD 6%, GRN 11%.
- Panelbase/Sunday Times had constituency shares of SNP 52%, LAB 23%, CON 14%, LD 6%. Regional support stood at SNP 48%, LAB 22%, CON 15%, LD 6%, GRN 6%
- YouGov/Times had constituency support at SNP 51%, LAB 22%, CON 18%, LD 4%.Regional support stood at SNP 45%, LAB 20%, CON 18%, LD 4%, GRN 6%
All three had the SNP just over 50% in the constituency vote, and a little lower in the regional vote (which may be a Green party effect, the Scottish Greens don’t typically stand in the constituencies). The main differences between the polls are that Survation show the Greens doing significantly better than Panelbase and YouGov, and that YouGov have the Scottish Tories doing significantly better.
Tables for the three polls are here – Panelbase, YouGov (1),(2), Survation