There’s greater than a contact of grim irony in the truth that, within the midst of a collection of blogposts alleging that SNP members have been systematically fleeced and hoodwinked by their occasion management, Stuart Campbell ought to but once more trot out a graph claiming that Sure help has remained completely static on 47% since 2015 – a declare he is aware of to be a downright lie. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the allegations towards the SNP, they’d even have a wonderfully affordable level in the event that they stated to Campbell that he must put his personal home so as and cease repeatedly deceiving his readers earlier than he can have any credibility in throwing stones himself.
Campbell’s graph has been discredited so many occasions, by so many alternative individuals, and from so many alternative angles, that it is virtually been overwhelmed to a pulp by this level. It has been defined that Campbell has simply hand-picked one single ballot from every year, relatively than averaging Sure help in all polls from every year. It has been defined that if he had averaged all polls, he’d have discovered Sure help had by no means been on 47% in any yr and had in truth assorted wildly from 45% in 2017 to 53% in 2020. It has been defined that if he had appeared on the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which he has generally prayed in support in different dodgy graphs, he is have discovered a good wider variation in help for independence from 39% in 2016 to 52% in 2021. It has been defined that the person polls he is cherry-picked usually are not even immediately comparable with one another, as a result of they arrive from 4 totally different polling firms that use totally different methodologies.
Is there every other remaining approach during which the graph could be debunked? Really, there may be. Campbell’s single ballot from every year has all the time been taken from April, implying that he thinks Sure help in April carries extra significance than in different months (for some unspecified purpose). So, because it truly is April proper now, I made a decision to search out out whether or not a mean of all polls carried out in April of every yr would bear out Campbell’s declare that April-flavoured Sure help has flatlined at precisely 47% since 2015. Spoiler alert: no in fact it does not. There have in truth solely been two years during which the April common has come out at 47%, and a kind of years is that this yr, which is not even coated by Campbell’s graph. There was variation from 45% in 2017 to 49% in each 2021 and 2022. Â
Common Sure vote in standard independence polls carried out (both in entire or partly) in April of every calendar yr:
April 2015: 48.2%
April 2016: 47.0%
April 2017: 45.3%
April 2018: (No polls carried out)
April 2019: 48.4%
April 2020: (No polls carried out)
April 2021: 49.2%
April 2022: 49.0%
April 2023: 47.0%
