Another poll, this time conducted by Survation, confirms the Scottish public are strongly opposed to legally-recognised gender self-IDTrying to commission
Scot Goes Pop's comprehensive poll on GRA reform and related issues a couple of months ago was an extremely stressful and bruising process, and by the time I finally got it done I did genuinely wonder whether Panelbase were the only polling firm in the UK that would actually have been willing to conduct the poll with balanced questions that hadn't been converted into incomprehensible Stonewall-speak. So it's heartening to see that Survation agreed to carry out a Scottish poll in November on the principle of legally-recognised gender self-identification on behalf of policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, and that the question asked was reasonably straightforward. It was a binary-choice question on whether a doctor's approval should be required for a legal change of gender.
The results are broadly in line with the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll from October, with only 27% of respondents indicating support for self-ID by saying a doctor's approval shouldn't be needed. 53% take the opposite view, and the remainder don't know. As a reminder, the Scot Goes Pop poll
had a four-option format, and found 20% support for self-ID, and a combined 58% support for the other options which all precluded self-ID.
So we have a clear division between the views of the voters, and the views of the parliamentarians those voters elected. On paper at least, there is an overwhelming majority in the Scottish Parliament for self-ID, due to the SNP, Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats all being in favour. And in a parliamentary democracy, it's the verdict of parliament that matters. However, what I would urge of MSPs is this: if you do decide to push through self-ID, at least be clear-sighted about the fact that you'll be doing so against the wishes of the public, and that the evidence for that is now compelling. People who tell you otherwise are, to be blunt, trying to con you. The only real polling counterweight to the Panelbase and Survation results is a Savanta ComRes poll from the start of this year which asked a deeply flawed and leading question. It studiously downplayed self-ID as merely an administrative tidying-up exercise to make life easier for people, and although it mentioned that there were objections from certain quarters, it was weirdly vague about what those objections were.
Ipsos-Mori's in-house identity politics extremist Mark McGeoghegan wrote a breathless analysis piece after the ComRes poll presenting the results as unquestionable gospel - and yet, without a trace of irony or self-awareness, he posted a series of tweets a few months later dismissing the
carefully balanced questions in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll as completely invalid. He was mysteriously unable or unwilling to specify what he thought was actually wrong with the wording of eight of the nine questions, including the main self-ID question. (He did make a more specific complaint about the ninth question - but what he said
didn't actually make any sense.)
The reality is that the polls that show big majorities against self-ID are the ones that use plain language and allow respondents to understand what they're being asked. The poll that purported to show support for self-ID used vague and obfuscatory language. That tells its own story.
* * *
You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with
iScot editor Ken McDonald
HERE (on video) or
HERE (audio only).
Source: Another poll, this time conducted by Survation, confirms the Scottish public are strongly opposed to legally-recognised gender self-ID (//)