Scottish independence referendum results thread (Sept 18, 2014)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Be wary of making crude demographic assumptions, btw. There were some very working class areas where Yes badly underperformed expectations (i.e. it wasn't just the poor results in rural Scotland). Historically Presbyterian working class areas perhaps? Admittedly you'd need to look at detailed figures that don't exist to be sure. Still, I wonder whether some of the patterns in general were heavily cultural?

Ramble ramble, five thirty am.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

All I'm saying is that the Orange Order held a big march for No.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Edinburgh is no

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The military is extremely important to the economy of Moray, note.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Moray even lower Yes vote (42,4%) than Angus (43,7%). Its interesting that those two are that low.

In Moray at least there was presumably an element of voting-with-my-wallet (see above). And I guess in Angus you still have Tories and they were 102% no as a group.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Firstly, why do you think it has that name? Second, they had a problem with getting some of the boxes to the counting centre: there was a crash on the road they were being brought on, delaying things by a couple of hours.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I thought throughout the campaign that Yes would have been better off having Sturgeon as the principle public face; Salmond's style is fine for elections, but too overbearing for a referendum.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

and not with their centre-right voters among the Tartan Tories in rural and small town Scotland, who voted with their vallets.

But note that although Ayrshire, Falkirk, Midlothian and so on are pretty 'small town' they aren't prosperous.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's a shame that we don't have lower level results, because I'm now fairly sure that ethnoreligious background was a factor.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Which means we also know more or less exactly who the twenty to thirty percent of Labour supporters (as highlighted by basically every poll) who voted Yes are. It makes a degree of logical sense; less attachment to the British state and - in a more functional sense - to the rest of the UK.

_{(Btw, have you ever considered a variant of 'this thing of ours' a generic jokey semi-euphemism for it?)}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

but then Al made the reference to the Orange Order march.

The point being more that the Orange Order is reflective (if more distantly than was once the case) of the culture of certain working class protestant areas in Scotland (will people who wave union flags at football matches vote for independence even if they have sometimes maybe voted SNP? It seems that the answer is no), than of an anti-catholic element in the vote.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't know what will happen and neither does anyone else, though I'll note that there are obvious political reasons for the SNP to insist (for now) that this was a once-in-a-generation vote.

My personal view is that few political phenomenons exemplify bad faith more than neverendums, and so I hope that we are more fortunate in that respect than Canada was.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would have to warn against treating survey subsamples as gospel truth, particularly when said samples are rather small.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In an attempt to demonstrate an under-appreciated aspect to the results, he's the No percentage by local authority with those local authorities that deviated from the overall result by more than 10pts highlighted:

Orkney - 67.2
Scottish Borders - 66.6
Dumfries & Galloway - 65.7
Shetland - 63.7
East Renfrewshire - 63.2
East Lothian - 61.7
East Dunbartonshire - 61.2
Edinburgh - 61.1
Aberdeenshire - 60.4
Perth & Kinross - 60.2
Stirling - 59.8
Aberdeen - 58.6
Argyll & Bute - 58.5
South Ayrshire - 57.9
Moray - 57.6
Angus - 56.3
Midlothian - 56.3
Fife - 55.1
South Lanarkshire - 54.7
Clackmannanshire - 53.8
Falkirk - 53.5
Na h-Eileanan Siar - 53.4
Highlands - 52.9
Renfrewshire - 52.8
East Ayrshire - 52.8
North Ayrshire - 51.0
Inverclyde - 50.1
North Lanarkshire - 48.9
Glasgow - 46.5
West Dunbartonshire - 46.0
Dundee - 42.7

As you can see, there weren't many.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some councils are releasing lower level results.

Here is the Yes vote by Scottish Parliamentary Constituency for Glasgow. Who holds the seat at Holyrood is in brackets

Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn - 57.1 (Labour)
Glasgow Provan - 56.97 (Labour)
Glasgow Pollok  - 53.87 (Labour - Johann Lamont)
Glasgow Southside - 52.99 (SNP - Nicola Sturgeon)
Glasgow Cathcart - 52.80 (SNP)
Glasgow Shettleston - 51.36 (SNP)
Glasgow Kelvin - 52.44 (SNP)
Glasgow Anniesland - 50.79 (SNP)

Interesting that Anniesland had the lowest percentage. Provan and Maryhill towards the top (and the only two removed from the overall result by more than 10pts) would tend to confirm the suspicion about ethnoreligious background, though Shettleston maybe not... but then what are the boundaries of Shettleston like again?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Coatbridge   0.527752422   Labour

...

Airdrie et al.   0.482329843   SNP

Ding Ding Ding

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I wonder where the people who work on the aircraft carriers live; the Scottish GMB came out as a strong No on the basis that those jobs might head south if the vote went the other way. The remaining yards are Govan (but not for long) and Scotstoun; the former is in Pollock now, the latter is in Anniesland.

I don't know that much about Glasgow, and no doubt afleitch can correct me if I'm wrong, but the thing that strikes me there is how similar they are. I'd have thought there'd be pretty big social and economic differences between the constituencies,so I'm surprised there's only a 7 point spread.

You are correct to note that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Do these figures include postal votes?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But yeah, Glasgow and Lanarkshire seem to show the pattern that we've talked about and indeed it could be suggested that the proportion of Labour voters saying Yes was higher than some of the surveys were suggesting.

There's a bit of a problem in that I don't think you could find a consensus on who is or who is not a 'Labour voter'. Possibly the % Yes was higher for 2011 voters than 2010 voters which is hilarious (i.e. that is absolutely what is suggested by geographical patterns, but there are several very good reasons to be wary of making too much of that).

_{(An important thing to note on implications though; as awkward as things will be for a bit for Scottish Labour (and given that its support has always been less uniform on these issues than most, it was always going to be; issues of nation not good news for social democratic party, film at eleven) things would be considerably worse than whatever the worst case scenario is if they'd not taken a firm line. Just ask the PSC...)}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Tories are completely dead in Glasgow city; at the last General Election they broke 10% in just one constituency (Glasgow South; which as Glasgow Cathcart was held from 1923 until 1979) and they didn't even manage that at the last Holyrood elections. On a city council of seventy nine members (elected by proportional representation as well) they have just a single seat.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well in a Scottish context a capital U Unionist has often been used to mean...

Anyway most of the constituencies contain diverse (or fairly diverse) areas and, as you'll note, most were close. Bridgeton is in the same constituency as Parkhead, for instance.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And was also a reference to the Liberal Unionist party which merged into the Tories at the dawn of the twentieth century. But which was based in... er... Birmingham.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Former Prime Ministers who decide to stay in the Commons are in a bit of an impossible position, which is why most decide not to stay in the Commons. Stay on the front bench and they risk undermining the new leader. Move to the backbenches and intervene regularly in debates and risk either the same, or turning into something of a freak show. Move to the backbenches and just sit there and risk being accused of sulking in public. Move to the backbenches and only turn up rarely and risk being accused of inactivity. Etc.

On the more general issue about the role of an MP, Tony Wright once made the following observation:

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