[SCOT goes POP!] A vague thought about something positive we could consider doing

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A vague thought about something positive we could consider doing

It's been more than two years since Scot Goes Pop last commissioned an opinion poll (although there were two in quick succession in early 2023).  I've been reluctant to go down that road again since my last dedicated polling fundraiser in 2024 ended up in no-man's-land, raising a significant amount but not enough to go ahead with the poll.  Additionally, I've become painfully aware over the years that running the polling fundraisers makes it much harder for the general annual fundraisers to succeed, and ultimately it's the general fundraisers that are the bread-and-butter - without them the blog can't survive for very long, and this year's fundraiser so far remains well short of its target figure.

All of that said, there's a part of me, maybe only a small part but nevertheless a part, that thinks now might be a good time for another poll.  In the wake of their narrow defeat in the Hamilton by-election, the SNP stand at a strategic crossroads with eleven months to go until the Holyrood election - still enough time for key changes to be made and trajectories to be altered.  Some voices within the party are sensibly calling for "the independence button to be pushed", in order to reverse the recent decoupling between Yes support and SNP support, but as you may have seen on Angus MacNeil's Twitter account, there are also other voices barking up completely the wrong tree and trying to convince themselves and everyone else that the problem must somehow be Kate Forbes (!) and her social conservative views.  If any heed is paid to that, the SNP could make a dreadful mistake by distancing themselves even further from independence and reverting to being an identity politics party.

Here's how I see the situation - 

* On the previous two comments threads, it seemed to me there was a lot of 'electoral illiteracy' on display - many people seem to assume that if the SNP fall short in one particular constituency, that must be an unmitigated disaster that proves they are on course for a crushing national defeat next year.  Trying to explain to these people that, actually, Hamilton is a particularly favourable sort of seat for Labour, and that the swing last night was broadly consistent with national opinion polls showing the SNP in a double-digit Scotland lead over Labour, seems to only produce derision and mockery.  The paradox is that the SNP's problem after Hamilton is not the result itself, which objectively was not all that bad, but the danger that the media hype about the result could in itself change public opinion by producing fresh momentum against the SNP.

* Although the result was close to being in line with the opinion polls, the SNP fell just very slightly short of where they perhaps should have been.  This is John Swinney's second contact with the voters in a major electoral event, and on both occasions I haven't been able to escape the feeling that the SNP have left a little bit on the pitch.  Swinney's good personal ratings in the polls suggest he should theoretically be an asset, but in practice it might not be working out quite that way when real elections occur.

* The danger is, then, that polling which on average has suggested the pro-independence parties will narrowly retain their majority in Holyrood next year could translate into an actual election result in which they narrowly lose their majority.  After last night, that's my gut feeling of the most likely outcome.  The SNP would probably stay in power as a minority government, but that wouldn't be much use to us - the independence movement would still be cast into the wilderness for at least five years.

* But on a more positive note, the fact that we're talking about missing out by narrow margins means that even a small corrective in the near future could save the day and rescue the pro-indy majority.

* Regardless of who is SNP leader, it seems logical that the best chance of maximising the SNP vote is to try to win back the huge numbers of people who now vote for unionist parties in spite of remaining independence supporters.  The only way of doing that is by bringing independence back to the forefront of the SNP's campaigning, an idea which seems to run counter to every instinct in John Swinney's body.  I think, therefore, it could be helpful to have a poll that explores how voters would react to an SNP that changes course and starts speaking of independence as an urgent priority and actually tries to deliver it.  If the results were favourable, I can't guarantee the SNP leadership would pay the slightest heed to the poll, but they'd probably be a bit more likely to pay heed to it than to even a million irate emails.  I'd obviously want to ask serious and credible questions in the poll that produce meaningful answers, rather than fantastical pie-in-the-sky nonsense like "how would you vote in a referendum that forced you to choose between independence and abolishing the Scottish Parliament altogether". 

* I would also, frankly, like to ask at least one credible question about Scottish attitudes towards the situation in Palestine, as a kind of remedial action after Campbell's outrageously leading poll question the other day that sought to portray the genocide in Gaza as a "war between Israel and Hamas", in which "both sides" are equally to blame.

* Bear in mind that there may be a downside to running a poll now because the voting intention question could potentially show a dip in SNP support in the wake of Hamilton.  That would probably be only temporary, but any such result could obviously be seized upon by our opponents.

Let me know what you think.  Because of the difficulties of fundraising that I outlined earlier, I'd probably only go ahead if there's overwhelming support for the idea.

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