renton

Yeah, they've has that problem through the entire campaign.

Wrote a long rambling thing about it a month or two ago, I said then I thought it would be 45/55 No, based entirely on what the BPC pollsters were showing. In that time Yes have managed to close the gap with YouGov, Panelbase, TNS and Panelbase now all showing a statistical dead heat, so Yes looks good for anything in the range 48-52. Even when I've been hopeful of a Yes win, I've never seen us winning by a big margin - assuming the Yes vote holds up between now and then and you get them out on the day, I reckon 52-48 Yes. That's flipping a coin, it could easily be the other way, but mind that the BPC guys all carry a +/- 3% margin so with the current polls there is a huge degree of uncertainty - hence why YG is doing a large sample poll to try and get that polling MOE down to +/- 1%

Mebbes Aye, mebbes No. Pollsters struggle with false recall, so that you get folk who say they voted in (say) 2011 but actually didn't, or the other interpretation is that they genuinely do find more folk who voted than didn't, thus oversampling on one part of the population. With online polls I'm inclined to the latter, as they tend to self select volunteers from people who are politically engaged. Having said that, they do see large swings to Yes in the C2D2E percentiles and a better Yes turnout in younger age groups, both of whom will be prevelent in those new voter classes. Also, RIC canvassing returns and registration drives did show strong yes returns amongst that C2D2E sub section of the populace (on the other hand they usually threw up enough DKs so that if they broke No, those impressive yes percentages would be eroded quickly). More anecdotally, I met a guy on Saturday who'd never voted once in 35 years, pretty much his whole voting eligible life, but had registered with the intention of voting No. He didn't particularly care who ran the UK or how they did it, just so long as there was a UK. Takes all sorts. So yeah, the official pollsters do see positive news for Yes in terms of those groups who likely make up large chunks of the newely registered voters, and this is somewhat backed up by the RIC canvassing, but I'll bet it's bloody fragile and while there is a probability that new voters will swing to Yes, there is only limited data to support that and enough uncertainty for me to make it more a matter of faith than fact.

Every poll going breaks down the data by gender, as well as post voting behavoiour and social group. Yeah, women do tend to lag behind men but the gap has closed to a degree.

rounding errors.

And No have all three major 'national' parties and their support networks, a media machine that largely favours the status quo and 300 years of historical inertia. These are all 'massive' advantages as well. ... and no one is saying the media is the reason yes will lose, the stories of this week were all on the face of it 'newsworthy' even if I personally found the reporting style sensationalist and simplistic (but that goes for most reporting). Fact is though that having thrown everything from the IMF and banks moving to increased food prices, and the Yes vote didn't melt away as clearly was hoped for. It's still too close to call, and all the polls have basically converged to a statistical tie, with yes ahving gained about 20 points over the last couple of years.

Some guy tries to analyse the referendum outcome by studying the flow of 'big data'.... make of it what you will. http://blog.majesticseo.com/research/scottish-election-poll/

I don't think anyone is saying that, I think there is a general sense of relief/surprise that the Yes vote has held up after a week where Westminster has clearly pushed what it believes are the consequences of a No vote very hard, not a case of 'blaming the media' more that there has been no discernable drift away frm yes after a concentrated drive by the No campaign.

Well, there has been a year long hunt for 'shy no' by the pollsters, of which the Kellner correction is the obvious example. There is not even any real anecdotal evidence to suggest it either - it's your opinion that it favours Yes and you could well be right, at the same time the sheer weight of negative press Yes gets and particularly in the last couple of weeks could easily make folk shy about admitting a yes vote in the face of being told they don't love their families or they are voting for a financial basket case. Not saying your wrong, just saying that there is perfectly legitimate arguments for why it might favour the other way as well.

Like TNS and their face to face polling, or the RIC and their face to face canvassing, actually talking to another human being about your opinion tends to cause a larger degree of reticence than the online polls where anonymity is guarenteed and you are self selecting from particulalry politically engaged people

Screw that, that's a great poll for Yes, on a traditionally bad methodology for yes, No ahead by a literal bawhair, a weke to go and with the onslaught of the last week, the Yes vote held up.

Combination mobile/landline poll. Will be interesting to see as it's the only ICM phone poll to date - and traditionally Yes have struggled in the Ipsos phone polls. They've brought it forward massively as well which suggests a bad result for Yes as well.

The BPC pollsters are pretty bad, and happily admit to being so, about picking up on new or lapsed voters. Take the latest YouGov poll, where 75% of the smaple said they voted in 2011 when we know that only 50% did. So they oversample on one part of the populace to a fair degree, so their polls come with a demographic hole in them. Assuming a big turnout as many now expect, that could really alter the outcome from what the polls are telling us.

Yeah, I don't think many will regret their yes vote but there will be a section of society, beaten into sullen compliance by the massed ranks of the establishment who will turn around in 5 years, when absolutely nothing has changed for the better and get fairly angry, I think.

So long as the polls were reasonably close I imagine we'd have got more or less the same concerted repsonse, though maybe a bit less manic.

Maybe, but i suspect that even YG barreling from 39 up to 48 would have cuased a significant level of panic regardless.

Yeah, and the No campaign has been doing.... what, exactly?

Looks like we won't be seeing ICM until tomorrow - they only stopped interviewing today.

What it does point to, assuming the BPC pollsters are accurate, is a very close result, one way or the other.

Well no, it's not the size of the sample, simply that the BPC pollsters struggle to pick up on lapsed or new voters - you've already got an issue in all of them with false recall (i.e. 70% of the sample say they voted in 2011 when we know only 50% did) so you are over sampling on one part of the electorate.

Again, 51% was probably on the high side of the distribution of polling, at this point, it's a statistical tie. Same situation as the start of the week when Yes were at 51% in YG.

Chill. No way we were going to see yes push further ahead after the last two YG polls with Survation and PB tucking in at 48% odd. It's simply that Yes has pushed to within a couple of points in the BPC polls and that is now fairly broadly agreed on by all of them. Given the sampling period and the fast movement of the campaign now, it's a miracle the yes vote held up as much as it did. Another polling sample could easily find Yes a couple of points up again.

Interesting, would mean a movement in undecideds to No (think that was at 7% in the last one). Not great news. Where the hell is ICM?

No idea, not on YouGov's headlines. I think it's a reversion to the mean, may be some push back from this weeks media frenzy and there may be something to that, but Yes is still only a bawhair out.

Pretty much confirms then, what the other polls have reckoned over the week, yes is at 48% in the polls, more or less.