Polling: 2017 General Election, Council Elections and Independence

[LongTimeLurker]

20 hours ago, BigFatTabbyDave said:

For the unionist side, the original independence referendum was dominated by tales of the terrible things that the outside world would do to us if we left the UK...

What swung the last referendum was that the SNP could not outline a convincing road map of what would happen next on EU membership and national currency and were therefore asking for a huge leap of faith.

Fast forward six years and the UK government can't provide a convincing way ahead on those sorts of issues either and is currently talking about breaking international law just to be able to maintain internal trading links with NI. If your Unionism revolves around 1801 as much as 1707 that is potentially mind blowing.

That 84% 16-24 number is a massive sea change because the Yes side is widely believed to have actually lost the argument amongst that cohort last time around. Looks like there hasn't been much net movement amongst older voters who grew up pre-devolution and had their attitudes on identity politics shaped by an era in which there was no Holyrood.

40% previously looked like the approximate floor No could ever go to because after that you were starting to get into voters for whom independence was unthinkable no matter what, so numbers as low as 25 and 16% amongst the two youngest cohorts must be terrifying from a Westminster perspective. 

Edited September 13, 2020 by LongTimeLurker

[Gordon EF]

In a sheer coincidence, 16% of 16-24 year olds are either Rangers fans or a member of their student Labour Party.

I'm not sure which is more tragic.

[strichener]

23 hours ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

On 12/09/2020 at 10:05, John Lambies Doos said:

It's interesting to review this against the 2014 vote. Trend is definitely in our favour, but people certainly become more conservative as they get older..
It's only a matter of time..

Some people may well get more conservative as they get older but whether they want to vote for THIS Conservative Party is another matter entirely. And consider this; for every 10 elderly people in Scotland who die and are replaced on the Electoral Register by new voters the major beneficiaries would be the Independence Parties. If the younger folk can be encouraged to turn out then at some point the numbers become unstoppable.

Almost like old folk is some mandatory cut-off between pro and anti independence.  For your statement to have any validity you would need to show that folks that enter your "elderly people" category and likely to remain in favour of independence.  Demographics shows that we are, as a nation, getting more elderly and therefore instead of waiting for these people to die it would be more beneficial to engage them and sway the ones that we can to a pro stance.

The oft used "old b*****ds" attitude isn't doing any favours either and is contrary to the aims of a inclusive movement.

Edited September 13, 2020 by strichener

[BawWatchin]

3 minutes ago, strichener said:

Almost like old filk is some mandatory cut-off between pro and anti independence.  For your statement to have any validity you would need to show that folks that enter your "elderly people" category and likely to remain in favour of independence.  Demographics shows that we are, as a nation, getting more elderly and therefore instead of waiting for these people to die it would be more beneficial to engage them and sway the ones that we can to a pro stance.

The oft used "old b*****ds" attitude isn't doing any favours either and is contrary to the aims of a inclusive movement.

You can't engage old people in anything. The rational to challenge and question things has long left them. They just get angry and shouty if you dare to address their bullshit perspective.

[Gordon EF]

22 minutes ago, strichener said:

  For your statement to have any validity you would need to show that folks that enter your "elderly people" category and likely to remain in favour of independence. 

This was always the big question though, wasn't it. Would the middle aged voters who supported independence in 2014 gravitate more towards No as they got older. Or would they stick with Yes and become an 'older' demographic who became more and more Yes leaning as they replace the 70+ group from 2014?

I think it's a bigger stretch to imagine that all those folk who voted Yes in 2014 in their 50s and 60s are suddenly going to swicth to No once they hit 70 just because they're older.

If the Yes / No split is a generational thing, rather than an age thing, a Yes win is inevitable.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Gordon EF

[strichener]

42 minutes ago, BawWatchin said:

You can't engage old people in anything. The rational to challenge and question things has long left them. They just get angry and shouty if you dare to address their bullshit perspective.

It is exactly this attitude that deters people from engaging.  The older generation may be less accommodating of new ideas and more set in their ways that doesn't mean that we should write off the whole demographic.  It would be utterly moronic to do so.

[strichener]

30 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

This was always the big question though, wasn't it. Would the middle aged voters who supported independence in 2014 gravitate more towards No as they got older. Or would they stick with Yes and become an 'older' demographic who became more and more Yes leaning as they replace the 70+ group from 2014?

I think it's a bigger stretch to imagine that all those folk who voted Yes in 2014 in their 50s and 60s are suddenly going to swicth to No once they hit 70 just because they're older.

If the Yes / No split is a generational thing, rather than an age thing, a Yes win is inevitable.

If it is generational then I agree with you.  However in the near term we should be engaging with all generations and not writing off whole swathes of the country.

[BawWatchin]

3 minutes ago, strichener said:

It is exactly this attitude that deters people from engaging.  The older generation may be less accommodating of new ideas and more set in their ways that doesn't mean that we should write off the whole demographic.  It would be utterly moronic to do so.

They're old bud. Nature writes them off for us.

[Gordon EF]

8 minutes ago, strichener said:

If it is generational then I agree with you.  However in the near term we should be engaging with all generations and not writing off whole swathes of the country.

I do agree there. Age seems to be one of the last areas where it seems totally acceptable to make sweeping generalisations about large numbers of people and it's totally understandable why that is. If you want to win people round then spotting lost causes and folk that are willing to engage is key. There are plenty older folk who're willing to listen to argument. A large number of them are clearly lost causes in terms of independence and the generation they're from is part of that.

[LongTimeLurker]

1 hour ago, Gordon EF said:

In a sheer coincidence, 16% of 16-24 year olds are either Rangers fans or a member of their student Labour Party.

I'm not sure which is more tragic.

By the time you get to 16%, it's worth bearing in mind that only 82% identified as being Scottish whether alone or in combination with another national identity such as British in the last census back in 2011. To reach a number like that represents tectonic levels of change that moves beyond stereotypes that arise from attitudes that hold sway amongst the older generations at 35+.

[Antlion]

I think it’s almost certainly a generational thing rather than an age thing. For most of my life time (I’m under thirty-five) the default position was that no one questioned Scotland’s minority status within the UK. It simply was. It’s the old “the long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right” thing. Older generations have spent the bulk of their lives never questioning the union or Scotland’s place in it, or even being encouraged to. Because it has become a massive issue in the last ten years, it’s easy to forget that that the constitution was on hardly anyone’s radar for hundreds of years.

[Gordon EF]

8 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

By the time you get to 16%, it's worth bearing in mind that only 82% identified as being Scottish whether alone or in combination with another national identity such as British in the last census back in 2011. To reach a number like that represents tectonic levels of change that moves beyond stereotypes that arise from attitudes that hold sway amongst the older generations at 35+.

Yes and No (no pun intended).

I'd bet my life you'd find similar trends in the 16-24 age group as you do in the older buckets. Even just things like Rangers fans will be far more unionist than the population at large. rUK born voters will be far more unionist than the population at large. These are obviously not one-to-one type relationships but they're stereotypes for a reason and they'll still hold across the population, maybe not quite as strongly as they once did mind.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Gordon EF

[O'Kelly Isley III]

I do agree there. Age seems to be one of the last areas where it seems totally acceptable to make sweeping generalisations about large numbers of people and it's totally understandable why that is. If you want to win people round then spotting lost causes and folk that are willing to engage is key. There are plenty older folk who're willing to listen to argument. A large number of them are clearly lost causes in terms of independence and the generation they're from is part of that.

The point I was trying to make in my last post was about the passing of the generations and how that is being reflected in the Scottish political sense. As one who is 64 I have no interest in writing anyone off. However, in terms of engagement I don't think there is great mileage for the Independence-minded amongst us to concentrate much on the high 70, 80 & 90 year-olds, as they likely grew up with the War, The Royal Family and the Labour and Conservative Parties with Scottish Independence nowhere on the radar. Most ain't gonna change. My generation is probably the first to have broken out of that mould and there is much still to play for there; speaking for myself I've had no great problem questioning and then abandoning the shibboleths of my youth, thanks in great part to successive Westminster Governments. At the other end of the age scale are young people who have known only a strong pro-Scottish political climate since the get-go. These may be generalisations, and I would admit that, but I'd also argue that they are not without foundation.

[LongTimeLurker]

3 hours ago, Gordon EF said:

Yes and No (no pun intended).

I'd bet my life you'd find similar trends in the 16-24 age group as you do in the older buckets. Even just things like Rangers fans will be far more unionist than the population at large. rUK born voters will be far more unionist than the population at large...

The point I'm making is that rUK born voters and others born elsewhere that don't identify as Scottish in any way could easily take up half of the 16%, so you probably need closer to 90% of people born in Scotland to have 84% overall.

Vast swathes of Scottish society that would normally be pigeonholed as Unionist (Rangers, fermers, the very well off, etc) have to be moving to Yes in completely unprecedented ways in that age cohort to get to that sort of number.

[Gordon EF]

Just now, LongTimeLurker said:

The point I'm making is that rUK born voters and others born elsewhere that don't identify as Scottish in any way could easily take up half of the 16%, so you probably need closer to 90% of people born in Scotland to have 84% overall.

Vast swathes of Scottish society that would normally be pigeonholed as Unionist (Rangers, fermers, the very well off, etc) have to be moving to Yes in completely unprecedented ways in that age cohort to get to that sort of number.

Aye, agree with you there. If those polling figures are anywhere near right, it represents a fairly earth-shattering breakdown of the traditional pull of unionism of large sections of Scottish society.

Similar to the destruction of the pull of the Labour Party from 2007-2015.

[strichener]

4 hours ago, BawWatchin said:

They're old bud. Nature writes them off for us.

You better hope it is generational and not conservatism growing with age. 

In 2018, just under one in five people (19%) in Scotland were aged 65 and over.  Over the last 35 years, the proportion of people aged 65 and over has increased from 14% to 19% of Scotland's population. 

Scotland's population is ageing
The increase in the population of older age groups has been much higher than younger age groups over the last 20 years.  The largest increase has been in the 75 and over age group (+31%) whereas the population of children aged 0 to 15 has decreased the most (-8%).

Edited September 13, 2020 by strichener

[Mr Heliums]

Just now, MixuFruit said:

People only get more conservative with age when they have investments in homes, pensions etc. to defend. From the unionist perspective there are two threats to this phenomenon: one is people who haven't been able to buy a house or been unable to retire and the other is people who now view the consequences of the conduct of the current UK government as the greater threat to their financial security.

Pension security was seen as a big thing by older folk in 2014, and you could understand their fear  – ruthlessly fomented by the Unionists. But like a lot of Unionist arguments, it's so much weaker now. I don't think people now view the UK Government's approach to pensions as anything reassuring (ask the WASPI women – or have a guess what's going to happen to the 'triple lock' at the next budget).

 

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, MixuFruit said:

People only get more conservative with age when they have investments in homes, pensions etc. to defend. From the unionist perspective there are two threats to this phenomenon: one is people who haven't been able to buy a house or been unable to retire and the other is people who now view the consequences of the conduct of the current UK government as the greater threat to their financial security.

The Greatest Generation had the memories of the war to bind them, the boomers had the greatest economic boom and arguably the largest collective level of economic security to sustain them and the 80s had Thatcher creating the insane housing bubble to sustain that generation of home owners. I can't imagine what the next gambit to sustain support for conservatism is other than widespread disenfranchisement and/ or voter apathy. None of these will save unionism in the long term.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

1 hour ago, strichener said:

You better hope it is generational and not conservatism growing with age...

It's most likely to be a bit of both rather than an either/or scenario.

[Granny Danger]

Encouraging more young(er) people to vote is one the most practical ways to increase the Yes vote next time around, though not an easy thing to do.

Engaging with young people should be a priority for the Independence movement; not being a young person I have no idea if this is happening.