The flatness of the polls
The dramatic changes we sometimes hear about come about because people compare the results from two different pollsters — if you look at one at a time, the polls have been practically static for months.
But why is that? My beloved wife offered the explanation that most voters actually aren’t very interested (yet), so they actually don’t pay much attention to all those fascinating stories that all the activists assume must be discussed at length over Scotland’s dining tables, which is why they don’t change their opinion, no matter how shallow it is.
If this is true, we all need to get better at talking to those uninterested voters and make them understand why this is so important, so that we can get the polls to start moving again!
It struck me in Scotland that if you are the type of person who might get frustrated with the Andrew Marr Show then you would possibly be rather more desirous of independence than if you were the type of person who likes nothing better than to wander round the Buchanan Galleries on a Saturday. It’s possibly not a live issue for the politically unaware.
If different pollsters consistently differ that much in results, do the polls have any value at all?
They are supposedly measuring the same thing, so they should get roughly similar results.
Søren, I think the differences are caused by different weightings (of last party voted for, likelihood to vote, etc). However, if they don’t know how to apply the weights, perhaps they shouldn’t do it at all and just use a random sample.
Rob, yes, indeed.
Thomas, I think you are right that different weighings might cause the differences. But using wighings in a poll only makes sense if you can calibrate the weights based on previous elections, and there haven’t been all that many independence referendums lately 🙂
Exactly. However, they probably don’t know what to do otherwise, given that at least the on-line pollsters have self-selected panels that are definitely not random.
The traditional pollers also have issues with the randomness of their polls, they just don’t like to talk about it.
If you dial people at random, a bored housewife is more likely to agree to talk to you, than a busy lawyer (or whatever). Correcting for that is not a simple thing to do.
In other words, the polls shown above probably are close to useless.
Not necessarily, but we won’t know for sure until after the referendum. 🙂
But then they are useless. If we can’t have any faith in their ability to measure popular opinion now, then they are meaningless. And after the referendum, they are even more useless.
But they might be usefull for calibrating weights for the next referendum on independence (if that ever happens), or for a future referendum on rejoining the UK 🙂