Yes vote steady at 49% in new Savanta pollI missed this Savanta poll yesterday, which (albeit narrowly) breaks the run of seven successive polls with a pro-independence majority.
Should Scotland be an independent country? (Savanta / The Scotsman, 16th-21st December 2022)
Yes 49% (-)
No 51% (-)
The reaction to this poll in unionist quarters is to suggest that a transitory Yes surge is now easing off due to memories of the Supreme Court ruling fading, and that we can now go back to sleep because it's business as usual and nothing has actually changed. And they may yet turn out to have a point, but it's far, far too premature to say that just now, for one obvious reason - the margin of error. If the true Yes vote is in the low 50s, as Panelbase and Redfield & Wilton recently suggested, you'd expect an occasional poll like this with Yes in the high 40s due to a slight underestimate. It'll only become clear that the Yes surge has genuinely eased off if we get at least two or three polls in a row with a small No lead.
I'm also a bit sceptical about Savanta's independence polls given the extraordinary events of early 2021. First, there was the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal, when Savanta effectively disowned (albeit using diplomatic language) bogus independence numbers published in their name by their client Scotland on Sunday. Then Savanta retrospectively changed the results of their previous independence polls due to a counting error being pointed out to them - and in the blink of an eye they had changed from being one of the most Yes-friendly firms to being one of the most No-friendly. It's not exactly a track record that inspires total confidence.
Also bear in mind the fact that Ipsos polls, and Ipsos telephone polls in particular, persistently show better results for Yes than other firms - meaning that when a firm like Savanta reports a slim No lead, it's fairly likely that an Ipsos poll conducted at the same time would produce a Yes lead. It's easy to lose track of the importance of that fact, given that Ipsos polls are obviously much rarer than non-Ipsos polls, but it's perfectly conceivable that Ipsos are getting it right and others are getting it wrong for two key reasons - a) only Ipsos use telephone fieldwork, and b) Ipsos are virtually the only firm to refrain from weighting by recalled 2014 indyref vote. The other firms' adherence to 2014 weighting is a very dubious practice after eight-and-a-bit long years.
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Source: Yes vote steady at 49% in new Savanta poll (//)