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Survation Poll Reports Record Conservative Holyrood Share

15th January 2016

The Daily Record chose to headline its new Scottish poll from Survation this morning – the first of 2016, and the first of what we are told will be a regular series between now and May – as indicating that the SNP were heading for an even larger majority at Holyrood than the nationalists won […]


A Race for Second Place?

18th December 2015

This time five years ago we were wondering whether the SNP could possibly win a second Holyrood term. Three polls published in the autumn of 2010 (and there were only three) all put Labour ahead of the SNP  – by between three and ten points. Far from anticipating the possibility of a SNP overall majority, […]


Scottish Labour’s Predicament

31st October 2015

Scottish Labour are gathered this weekend in Perth in the hope of kick-starting a revival. The party certainly badly needs to do so. The hole in which it finds itself now is as every bit as deep as the one into which it fell in May when it was all but wiped out in the […]


Public Attitudes to Devolution in Wales – a Permissive Consensus?

28th October 2015

The UK Government recently published a draft version of a new Wales Bill. This offers the prospect of more changes to the Welsh devolution settlement, to add to the many that have occurred since the National Assembly for Wales (NAW) was first established in 1999. But while the politicians debate matters, is there clear evidence […]


The SNP’s Dilemma

16th October 2015

One of the key lessons of Scottish politics in the last 12 months is that referendums and parliamentary elections can present a political movement that is capable of garnering around half the vote with very different challenges. In a referendum that movement may well fail to win, as happened to Yes in September last year. […]


Scotland A Year On – A Divided Nation?

18th September 2015

Today is the day to take stock of where Scotland stands exactly a year on from an independence referendum that the UK government at least hoped would be ‘decisive’. It hardly looks that way now. For Scotland appears to be divided straight down the middle on the constitutional question on which it voted exactly a […]


Survation Also Show Little Movement to Yes

14th September 2015

As referendum first anniversary fever grows, today sees the publication of yet another poll on how Scots now view the constitutional question. Like the two polls published over the weekend, today’s poll, conducted by Survation for the Daily Mail, asked people how they actually voted in the referendum and the data have been weighted so […]


Weekend Polls Fail to Replicate Summer Surge for Independence

13th September 2015

Regular readers will be aware that recent polls from Ipsos MORI and TNS BMRB have suggested that there has been an increase in support for independence during the course of the summer – and that contrary to all previous polling since March a majority would now vote Yes in a second referendum. However, neither of […]


Another Pre-Anniversary Poll, Another Yes Lead

9th September 2015

Another poll released in anticipation of the first anniversary of the independence referendum, and another poll that suggests that the result would be different if the ballot were to be held now. Last week Ipsos MORI released a poll showing that once Don’t Knows are excluded, 55% now say they would now vote Yes to […]


How Popular is EVEL?

4th September 2015

Last year’s independence referendum might have settled – for the time being at least – the question of whether Scotland should be an independent country. But it left a legacy of two further debates and controversies. The first, instigated by Gordon Brown’s ‘vow’ in the final days of the referendum campaign, was about how much […]


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