Latest Polls and Latest Odds

[AUFC90]

Yes have no chance. Didn't you know? NO CHANCE. The bookies say so.

We should listen to our nice, caring, No voting friends and give up.

Alternatively we could all just turn up and vote unlike the nos

[renton]

I'll try and be absolutely objective here, and not let my natural bias to yes interfere.

If you look at the BPC polling data on it's own, it seems unlikely that yes would get itself ahead in the polls by the day of reckoning. Several times now, pollsters have shown yes to within a bawhair of levelling, or drawing ahead - without ever actually managing to do so.

It's worth noting that all of the pollsters have various quirks in their methodologies: The online polls can suffer from picking the same folk, over and over, as well as their individual issues -YouGov with it's proper Nat/Passing Nat strategy that just begs for the multiplication of statistical error within the sample, or Panelbase and it's recent shift to partial weighting to the Euro elections who's turnout was low enough to cast doubt on the representative nature of that election on Scotland. Then you have TNS, who's face to face polling method tends to reduce anonymity, and possibly therefore voter honesty (possibly why TNS always record much larger DKs than everyone else?) and Ipsos who's phone polling methods can be skewed by demographics - having to massively upweight certain sections to get the weighting right, and even then not actually weighting to the demographic profile that SSAS/census data recorded.

However, they all agree that yes is behind - they can't all be wrong. I do think that numbers are probably in the mid forties (dk excluded) for yes. Even Ipsos are above 40% now for Yes. Thus I believe if you ironed out all the varying polling idosynchracies you'd get to a number of around 45% for yes (DK excluded). DKs are NOT around "a third of the electorate" as some articles have suggested, unless of course TNS are correct. Having said that, the proportional difference between yes and No in TNS is broaldy the same as the online guys with smaller DKs. If DKs split marginally for Yes, as those few polls who've asked indicated, yes might end up fractionally higher - 46% or so.

I think this is just the reality of where we are, right now. One thing I don't believe is that yes needs to be considerably ahead on the day to do the job. 50.01% would do it, I don't think in this referendum there is a soft yes, and the general tone and feel of the debate means that going from No/DK to Yes is a bit of a trial and once there folk tend to be Yes voters with some conviction. it's getting to that fabled 50+1 vote that's the issue.

In terms of the Canvassing returns. these are generally unreliable. Like TNS, but worse. You could easily see industrial scale lying to the canvassers (admittedly th SNP/Yes graded scale is designed to at least filter some of that out). The RIC as far as i can see don't use that methodology in their mass canvasses, thus are open to being lied to. The other thing is that theirs is not, and isn't intended to be a dmeographic profile of Scotland. It's targeted at the C2D2E communties, the folk who haven't before voted. One thing in their favour is the sheer size fo the canvass, which lends it some weight (quality is great, but quantity has a quality all of it's own) - again, that's not demogrpahically accurate. These guys seem to break massively yes, and if we can doubt the overall margin of of yes to no in these canvasses, we can't really doubt the overall sentiment.

The BPC pollsters struggle to cope with first time voters, and I think a lot of Yes hopes are pinned on getting these guys out on referendum day, but how realistic is that. You can canvass them, register them, convince them - but you might well not get them to the booth. How realistic is it to get folk out who are naturally wary of politics, haven't voted in decades and thinks all this stuff happens in another world that has nothing to do with them.

I'd be wary on relying on them, even if they are the folk a Yes vote has the most potential to help.

So to conclude? Well, it's a bit of a rambling post that no one will have any interest in, mostly I just wanted to waste some bandwidth and put my thoughts in one place. Really, Yes at the moment look like losing while getting a vote in the mid forties on the day. Respectable, but ultimately futile. Unless of course, Reynard's worst nightmare comes true and a previously unnacounted for demographic of "scheme goblins" rise from the concrete towers to smite him mightily. probably not though, and unless there is a shift we'll go down 45/55 in my opinion.

[H_B]

I think it will be marginally closer than that but in the ballpark .

Its been quite surprising to me how static polling has been. I think referendum fatigue is an issue too.

The chat from those I've spoken to after the debate was certainly 'how many times have we heard these tired sound bites trotted out now'?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

I'll try and be absolutely objective here, and not let my natural bias to yes interfere.

If you look at the BPC polling data on it's own, it seems unlikely that yes would get itself ahead in the polls by the day of reckoning. Several times now, pollsters have shown yes to within a bawhair of levelling, or drawing ahead - without ever actually managing to do so.

It's worth noting that all of the pollsters have various quirks in their methodologies: The online polls can suffer from picking the same folk, over and over, as well as their individual issues -YouGov with it's proper Nat/Passing Nat strategy that just begs for the multiplication of statistical error within the sample, or Panelbase and it's recent shift to partial weighting to the Euro elections who's turnout was low enough to cast doubt on the representative nature of that election on Scotland. Then you have TNS, who's face to face polling method tends to reduce anonymity, and possibly therefore voter honesty (possibly why TNS always record much larger DKs than everyone else?) and Ipsos who's phone polling methods can be skewed by demographics - having to massively upweight certain sections to get the weighting right, and even then not actually weighting to the demographic profile that SSAS/census data recorded.

However, they all agree that yes is behind - they can't all be wrong. I do think that numbers are probably in the mid forties (dk excluded) for yes. Even Ipsos are above 40% now for Yes. Thus I believe if you ironed out all the varying polling idosynchracies you'd get to a number of around 45% for yes (DK excluded). DKs are NOT around "a third of the electorate" as some articles have suggested, unless of course TNS are correct. Having said that, the proportional difference between yes and No in TNS is broaldy the same as the online guys with smaller DKs. If DKs split marginally for Yes, as those few polls who've asked indicated, yes might end up fractionally higher - 46% or so.

I think this is just the reality of where we are, right now. One thing I don't believe is that yes needs to be considerably ahead on the day to do the job. 50.01% would do it, I don't think in this referendum there is a soft yes, and the general tone and feel of the debate means that going from No/DK to Yes is a bit of a trial and once there folk tend to be Yes voters with some conviction. it's getting to that fabled 50+1 vote that's the issue.

In terms of the Canvassing returns. these are generally unreliable. Like TNS, but worse. You could easily see industrial scale lying to the canvassers (admittedly th SNP/Yes graded scale is designed to at least filter some of that out). The RIC as far as i can see don't use that methodology in their mass canvasses, thus are open to being lied to. The other thing is that theirs is not, and isn't intended to be a dmeographic profile of Scotland. It's targeted at the C2D2E communties, the folk who haven't before voted. One thing in their favour is the sheer size fo the canvass, which lends it some weight (quality is great, but quantity has a quality all of it's own) - again, that's not demogrpahically accurate. These guys seem to break massively yes, and if we can doubt the overall margin of of yes to no in these canvasses, we can't really doubt the overall sentiment.

The BPC pollsters struggle to cope with first time voters, and I think a lot of Yes hopes are pinned on getting these guys out on referendum day, but how realistic is that. You can canvass them, register them, convince them - but you might well not get them to the booth. How realistic is it to get folk out who are naturally wary of politics, haven't voted in decades and thinks all this stuff happens in another world that has nothing to do with them.

I'd be wary on relying on them, even if they are the folk a Yes vote has the most potential to help.

So to conclude? Well, it's a bit of a rambling post that no one will have any interest in, mostly I just wanted to waste some bandwidth and put my thoughts in one place. Really, Yes at the moment look like losing while getting a vote in the mid forties on the day. Respectable, but ultimately futile. Unless of course, Reynard's worst nightmare comes true and a previously unnacounted for demographic of "scheme goblins" rise from the concrete towers to smite him mightily. probably not though, and unless there is a shift we'll go down 45/55 in my opinion.

I've gone 57-43 but pretty much agree with your analysis.

Yes imho have focussed on the wrong voters.

The ones they need to convince are those that are fairly well-off and see independence as an uncertainty - more likely to vote and more likely to vote No - but as soft Nos.

[Mr Bairn]

I'll try and be absolutely objective here, and not let my natural bias to yes interfere.

If you look at the BPC polling data on it's own, it seems unlikely that yes would get itself ahead in the polls by the day of reckoning. Several times now, pollsters have shown yes to within a bawhair of levelling, or drawing ahead - without ever actually managing to do so.

It's worth noting that all of the pollsters have various quirks in their methodologies: The online polls can suffer from picking the same folk, over and over, as well as their individual issues -YouGov with it's proper Nat/Passing Nat strategy that just begs for the multiplication of statistical error within the sample, or Panelbase and it's recent shift to partial weighting to the Euro elections who's turnout was low enough to cast doubt on the representative nature of that election on Scotland. Then you have TNS, who's face to face polling method tends to reduce anonymity, and possibly therefore voter honesty (possibly why TNS always record much larger DKs than everyone else?) and Ipsos who's phone polling methods can be skewed by demographics - having to massively upweight certain sections to get the weighting right, and even then not actually weighting to the demographic profile that SSAS/census data recorded.

However, they all agree that yes is behind - they can't all be wrong. I do think that numbers are probably in the mid forties (dk excluded) for yes. Even Ipsos are above 40% now for Yes. Thus I believe if you ironed out all the varying polling idosynchracies you'd get to a number of around 45% for yes (DK excluded). DKs are NOT around "a third of the electorate" as some articles have suggested, unless of course TNS are correct. Having said that, the proportional difference between yes and No in TNS is broaldy the same as the online guys with smaller DKs. If DKs split marginally for Yes, as those few polls who've asked indicated, yes might end up fractionally higher - 46% or so.

I think this is just the reality of where we are, right now. One thing I don't believe is that yes needs to be considerably ahead on the day to do the job. 50.01% would do it, I don't think in this referendum there is a soft yes, and the general tone and feel of the debate means that going from No/DK to Yes is a bit of a trial and once there folk tend to be Yes voters with some conviction. it's getting to that fabled 50+1 vote that's the issue.

In terms of the Canvassing returns. these are generally unreliable. Like TNS, but worse. You could easily see industrial scale lying to the canvassers (admittedly th SNP/Yes graded scale is designed to at least filter some of that out). The RIC as far as i can see don't use that methodology in their mass canvasses, thus are open to being lied to. The other thing is that theirs is not, and isn't intended to be a dmeographic profile of Scotland. It's targeted at the C2D2E communties, the folk who haven't before voted. One thing in their favour is the sheer size fo the canvass, which lends it some weight (quality is great, but quantity has a quality all of it's own) - again, that's not demogrpahically accurate. These guys seem to break massively yes, and if we can doubt the overall margin of of yes to no in these canvasses, we can't really doubt the overall sentiment.

The BPC pollsters struggle to cope with first time voters, and I think a lot of Yes hopes are pinned on getting these guys out on referendum day, but how realistic is that. You can canvass them, register them, convince them - but you might well not get them to the booth. How realistic is it to get folk out who are naturally wary of politics, haven't voted in decades and thinks all this stuff happens in another world that has nothing to do with them.

I'd be wary on relying on them, even if they are the folk a Yes vote has the most potential to help.

So to conclude? Well, it's a bit of a rambling post that no one will have any interest in, mostly I just wanted to waste some bandwidth and put my thoughts in one place. Really, Yes at the moment look like losing while getting a vote in the mid forties on the day. Respectable, but ultimately futile. Unless of course, Reynard's worst nightmare comes true and a previously unnacounted for demographic of "scheme goblins" rise from the concrete towers to smite him mightily. probably not though, and unless there is a shift we'll go down 45/55 in my opinion.

^^^ Too smart for this sub forum

[Anonapersona]

I want a government that looks to the right on the economy and looks to the left on social justice, I've given up all hope of ever getting it at Westminster.

One thing I'm certainly not voting for is anyone to spend like Labour that's why I've not been critical of the SNP's course of centralisation even although I'm looking for a serious devolution of power to local communitiesn after a YES vote, ffs we'd be bankrupt if we'd allowed Labour councils to spend spend spend in an attempt to derail independence.

I believe that a happy and well cared for workforce is a more open-minded and productive workforce.

I like the way you think, good sir.

[Tio Pepe]

^^^ Too smart for this sub forum

Speak for yourself.

[Thumper]

At least expectations of Salmond will be down considerably for the next debate. Perhaps it was the plan all along, lure Darling into a false sense of security on STV and then lay the smack down on the BBC.

I will be flabbergasted if the BBC even turn his mic on.

[P45]

A William Hill @WillHillBet punter has upped his £400,000 stake to £600,000 bet on a no vote - UK's largest political punt #indyref

Thank f**k for these c***s. Get your bets on Yes.

[Lex]

A William Hill @WillHillBet punter has upped his £400,000 stake to £600,000 bet on a no vote - UK's largest political punt #indyref

Thank f**k for these c***s. Get your bets on Yes.

How much have you got on yes?

[ecto]

I'm starting to think of Yes as the athlete/ horse in a race which hangs back, reserving energy, only to put on the afterburners in the home straight.

or it has already expended all its energy and its limping over the line

[Confidemus]

or it has already expended all its energy and its limping over the line

You keep thinking that, champ. Suits me.

[P45]

How much have you got on yes?

In total about £140.

[jmothecat]

In total about £140.

You've seriously bet £140 on something that is quite obviously not going to happen?

[Jamaldo]

You've seriously bet £140 on something that is quite obviously not going to happen?

Is that dafter than betting £600,000 on a vote with only two possible outcomes?

[P45]

You've seriously bet £140 on something that is quite obviously not going to happen?

Of course it will happen.

[Blaven]

Did they not say that more has been bet on a YES outcome than on a NO?

With greater odds given on a YES, it must be in the bookies interest for it being a NO vote.

Naw?

[jmothecat]

Of course it will happen.

Because of the numerous poll leads Yes consistently have?

[Confidemus]

Because of the numerous poll leads Yes consistently have?

As a diehard Labour man and a follower of all polls, you seem like a really balanced individual.

[jmothecat]

As a diehard Labour man and a follower of all polls, you seem like a really balanced individual.

Why are you so convinced I'm a labour 'diehard'? I'm a Labour member, certainly not a diehard. I'm considerably worried by the overtly left-wing stance our current leader is taking.

I am a New Labour diehard, unfortunately though, I think New Labour has indeed died.