Scottish Independence – Polling Trends

Not long to go now until the Scottish Independence Referendum. The noise is crowding out the signal, and more and more people seem to be deciding which way they are going to vote. Also those not able to vote (i.e. the residents of the rest of the UK) are also expressing their opinions. So I thought I would go look at the opinion polls and the trend. I recognised that the various campaign followers have criticised various pollsters for being biased, so I thought I’d get the data and graph it by major pollster. I also produced a series of trend lines to see how things were changing. These are shown below.

A couple of points:

• This is the YES proportion after the undecideds are excluded
• all the pollsters declare a +/- 3% margin of error

Conclusions

Support for Independence is improving, but almost certainly not fast enough for a victory. However I suspect that in the next fortnight the rate of deciding will increase rapidly. It is possible for a Yes vote, but No is more likely as an outcome.

• the combined trend gets to about 47% YES by 18th September
• Panelbase (the most pro-YES) is only about 48%, most of the others are about 46%
• Either way it will be a close result

Related articles

• No lead falls to 6 points in Scottish referendum poll
• Polls claim late surge of support for Scottish independence
• The Yes camp is gaining ground in the Scottish independence referendum
• Scottish independence referendum poll: the latest tracker
• Pollsters nervous despite indications that Scotland will spurn independence
• Debate has intoxicated Scotland. People have seen the chance to seize power
• Scottish Independence: Betfair punters bet on ‘No’
• Poll finds rapid shift in favour of Scottish independence
• Campaign for an independent Scotland stalls before historic vote
• Poll shows collapse in Scottish referendum No vote