There is a distinct difference between SNP supporters and independence supporters, sure the Venn Diagram would show a considerable overlap between the two but it does not follow that they support independence. I'm a good example of an SNP minded voter (no I've never been a SNP member despite some of the latest myths I see floating about) who doesn't support independence.
Indeed it is arguable that Andrew Wilson's Growth Commission report was all about persuading people like me, who are passionate about devolution and not put off voting SNP to consider shifting my support towards independence. However the effect was the opposite; it shifted me more towards enhancing devolution, but I'm not entirely sure that wasn't the real strategy of the report in any case.
Sadly of course we know that Wilson then having taken his 30 pieces of silver had to go along with the live on air rewriting of his report when it bombed with hard core nationalists. It was a very sad way to watch a man of considerable integrity degrade himself in public for politics.
Worse, it seems that this is not a one off with Wilson, he appears to be refusing to debate serious technical deficiencies with his report preferring to play to the trolling crowd, and lately he's slipping into straight denial of factual information.
When asked why the No vote was growing consistently in the polls since the referendum Wilson simply trolled a false reply.
"It isn't"
He then of course refused to take the conversation any further.
The Andrew Wilson of old would never have got into such trolling and avoidance and offered a considered and nuanced view of the position. Not now, now it's just playing to the gallery of the twitter mob. What a level to fall to.
So let me give some of the nuance that the Wilson of old would have given following the latest Survation poll.
Polling
As some of you may know from my previous life on Twitter I analyse every poll from whatscotlandthinks.org published since the referendum.
I split them up by the three polling companies with a statistically relevant number of polls (survation, yougov and Panelbase) and then create a line of best fit for each set of results.
This data now includes the latest Survation poll, which again shows there is no reason at all for independence supporters to be happy.
I do this in two ways, one on a Yes/No basis excluding all the Don't Knows and Won't Vote.
And also no a Yes only basis which is designed to show the underlying Yes support.
This data is far more significant than the Yes/No data. You can see that in the R-squared measure (basically the extent to which the line fits the data) which all have results above 0.7. This is quite different from the Yes/No data where PanelBase and Survation have much lower scores on account of quite considerable variation in their Don't Knows over time. The exception to this is YouGov who score well on both in terms of the trend line fitting the data.
So what does this tell us?
The Yes vote has been consistently been decaying since the referendum. Yes there are spikes, such as the Brexit result, where Yes vote spiked and then fell back to its decaying pattern, but the point is that in nearly 4 years the Yes vote in polling has just lost ground and continues to do so.
There is a key point to be made here about polling and voting. Many nationalists will want to note that the polling level (excluding Don't Knows) remains at or above the 45% they got in the referendum. True. But that was a vote not a poll.
What we do know from the independence referendum (and the results from the subsequent 2 British General elections and Scottish General election) is that polling still has a nationalist leaning systematic bias (more on that another time).
Indeed at the time of the independence referendum the best guide to the actual Yes vote was simply to look at the raw Yes vote, that is don't exclude the don't knows, as on that basis the polls had Yes at 45%. It's for that reason that this second chart is so important as it probably gives you the best indicator of the true level of Yes support in the country.
That's not a hard and fast rule, I'm not saying you should always add the don't know votes to the No side (I can hear the strawmen being created now), I'm saying it's a way of analysing the underlying trends in the data.
However you look at this data though it's not comfortable reading for a rational thinking independence supporter, something is very wrong with their case and it needs a strong rethink.
Wilson's claim & the data
Let me just wind this up with a return to Andrew Wilson's claim. Demonstrably the No vote is on the increase since 2014, so his "it isn't" is just plain wrong and I have no doubt he knows that.
It's possible to quibble about some of the polling firms in terms if the line of best fit and come up with a more nuanced reply here, but the fact is that straight dismissal is wrong on every level.
More to the point, Wilson was trying to argue the age bias in independence support as some remarkable case, which gives succour to the independence is inevitable theory. I don't believe it is and the sheer fact of the matter is that if there was such a fixed cohort of opinion that was shifting towards Yes as the old no voters die out then we would be seeing those Yes lines moving upwards over the last 4 years.
We've not, Simply because such an age related analysis is fundamentally flawed. Wilson knows this, which is why he didn't want to engage any further on it. Why he's taking part in this low level trolling rather than elevating debate I don't know. Take it from me Andrew, give up Twitter!
