DeeTillEhDeh

I recently spoke to a someone from Abertay who said that he had only spoken to 3 students in his faculty who were for Yes - all were from outside the UK. The home students were either undecided or No.

It's scaremongering opinion - the 2 legs bad 4 legs good that sees everything in black and white terms when, in reality, it's shades of gray. I can see merits in independence, problems and unanswered questions - the same is true for the status quo. A lot of other voters will be the same.

Just a quick question as I am a fairly recent poster to these threads. What's this NCC that HB refers to?

I saw a graph of the various ICM polls and it shows pretty much the same thing - spikes up and down but no real trend either way.

I wasn't staggered at all. With the implosion of the SSP the only place a protesting Lib Dem voter was going to go was the SNP. Given the history between Labour and the Lib Dems it certainly wasn't going to go to Labour. The Greens too benefited from the poor Lib Dem showing.Many traditional Labour voters - even though not nationalist found a vote for the SNP more palatable than a vote for the numpties in Scottish Labour.

Clearly we are not going to agree. But if Yes win despite not having led at any point in reliable polls then I think that's safe to say a seismic change. We'll see come September who is correct.

There are 2 other options - don't vote or spoil you ballot. Panelbase - issues with how they screen their polls - this is not just for the independence polls but all of them. They just aren't reliable imho. In any case I'm not a great believer in looking at one-off polls - you are better looking at trends across polls - it still looks static to me. That could change of course but the nearer we get to September the less time to persuade. I still believe Yes have a chance but that is not polls but pure gut instinct telling me that the No vote is softer than the Yes vote.

IP Not voting is an option. That's why don't know can't be ignored. You can't assume they will break evenly to either side or not vote at all.Also I would say that Panelbase is not exactly the best organisation to be doing any sort of polling. Poor screening is one of the major criticisms that has been aimed in their direction. I'd be more inclined to look at the trend with the more reputable polling organisations. What would be more interesting if there had been private polling showing a trend either way - but I'm not aware there has been anything of significance leaked by either campaign. My gut tells me that things (for the moment) are pretty static. That may change but we shall see.

You just can't exclude don't knows.

If Yes start to consistently get well above 40% (heading towards 45%) then they have a serious chance. Even on the most optimistic polls Yes require a swing of around 20% (effectively +10%). That's tough.

As most polls have a +/- 3% error then that's meaningless.

I'd agree to an extent. But unless there is seismic shift in voting intentions then Yes still face an uphill battle.

No' as big as yours . . .

Personally think the No campaign have been pish so far - Yes better organised. Yet no real change in voting intentions.

As the option I wanted isn't on the ballot paper I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place. Increasingly I feel it won't matter either way - I'll vote but it may well be a spoilt ballot given the campaigns from both sides. Certainly No haven't made a proper case for the Union yet and Yes have a number of key areas that l feel need a lot more clarity. Best result for me would be a narrow win for No and there being no option but to devolve more powers when (not if) the SNP win the next Scottish Parliament elections.

In Dundee the areas that were staunchly Labour that switched to SNP over the past 10-15 years were all in what you could call deprived areas. So it doesn't surprise me - Labour lost touch with it's core vote and the only place it could go was the SSP and the SNP. Once the Trots imploded the SNP were the only real option for disillusioned Labour voters. The same may be true regards independence - a feeling if it can't get any worse. For middle income voters the SNP (and independence) is seen as more of a risk - the notion of we are not doing too badly so we don't want to risk change.That might be a simplification of things - people do vote for all sorts of reasons. I know a number of folk who will consistently vote SNP in elections but No in the referendum - I also know some who vote Labour who will vote Yes.

We could run a book on the %s - I'd say the split will be 57% No 43% Yes.

Should be at least the same as us -25 pts. Could be even harder if they think they are deliberately flouting the rules to take the penalty now when its effect would be meaningless.

This time I don't think it is a rumour. The denials are very familiar to those when we went in to administration a second time.

This one looks like it has legs though.

I thought we were the Kings of Dubious Ownership - The Rangers make Dundee look like a paragon of virtue by comparison.

Tbh I have not really seen that sort of language here. Have seen it on The Scotsman comments pages - usually from the same individuals who take afront that you might actually disagree with them. Some have been so bad I wondered if they were unionists posing as N(n)ationalists to give them a bad name.The crazy thing is that the vote won't be determined online as some of the key voters will either not use those sorts of sites or be technologically averse (yes even in this day and age). The big things in the Yes campaign's favour is that the SNP are probably the best organised of the political parties on the ground and that the Yes vote is probably not as soft as the No/undecided vote. The big negative for the Yes campaign is that it is still dominated by the SNP and the other voices are not being heard. I think, for example, the argument over Currency Union has not been well-handled, and could and should have been presented in a lot more concilliatory fashion. The problem is that the arguments by both sides are being presented as black/white arguments when in reality they are not as clear-cut as some would have us believe. My biggest fear is not a Yes vote but a narrow win by either side - especially a narrow No vote - the spectre of neverendums does not appeal to me in the slightest.

I read that link and it confirms what I was saying - what might look like a neutral poll isn't. That's not just because he SNP commissioned it - if it had been Labour or the Tories I would have been just as sceptical.At the end of the day the only poll that matters is the one in September.

You are right about manipulation. I remember being shown a long time ago by my marketing lecturer how subtle rephrasing of a question can give completely different responses. It's an old joke that marketing executives, when drawing up a market research survey, ask their clients not what questions they want but what answers they want.

Online polls are not worth the paper they are not written on. That's not just the type of political poll that is open to hijacking by interested parties eg multi-voting - most polls online don't have the rigour required for serious analysis.