It’s certainly been an interesting last 24 hours in the independence referendum.
Before the first televised debate between Alastair Darling and Alex Salmond, Ipsos MORI published their latest poll in associated with STV.
The results were:
Yes — 40% (+4)
No — 54% (-)
Undecided — 6% (-4)
Mark Diffley, director at Ipsos-MORI Scotland, said: “With 45 days to go until the referendum the Yes campaign will be heartened that it continues to narrow the gap in public opinion. It appears that the gains made by Yes are driven by undecided voters deciding to vote in favour of independence in September. The No campaign will take some comfort that support for the union remains unchanged and that it retains a significant lead with the referendum fast approaching. The Commonwealth Games has proved a complete triumph with the public though it doesn’t appear to have had a huge effect on voting intentions in September.”
In what would have been great news for the Yes campaign was overshadowed by the two hour debate that followed. Although neither Salmond or Darling managed to land a knockout blow to each other, the general consensus was that Darling had won overall. Partly this was due to expectation setting that had taken place, where Salmond was expected to get the best of Darling.
Also included in the Ipsos-MORI poll was Holyrood voting intentions. Sadly, these do not differentiate between constituency and regional voting intention, but if used for both, the chamber in 2016 would look like this:
Therefore, the SNP would still be the largest party in the Parliament. But Labour and the Scottish Conservatives gained seven extra seats each. As mentioned, this is a rather blunt method of prediction, but interesting nonetheless.
ICM’s post-debate snap poll of 512, gave Darling the victory in the debate by a margin of 56% to 44%. With a small size that small, the margin of error could be quite large, and ICM themselves said it “SHOULD NOT be seen as a normal vote intention poll”.