Scottish Independence Referendum - 18 September 2014

[DL]

As a Canadian who has lived through a couple of referenda on independence in Quebec, allow me to predict what IMHO will happen.

I predict this will be like what happened in 1995 where at first everyone assumed the NO side would win easily, then the NO campaign ended up floundering and the Yes side captured people's imaginations with all this "Oui et tout sera possible!" (Yes and everything is possible)...in other words come with us abroad this spaceship for an exciting adventure into the unknown.

10 days before the referendum some shocking polls came out showing that Yes was ahead and had all the momentum etc...but in the end people who made up their minds at the very last minute got scared by the fact that voting Yes would literally pull the pin out of the grenade and they almost all went NO at the last minute...also there is a phenomemon in Quebec of the "shy federalist"...its kind of "uncool" to support the status quo in Quebec and so a lot of No voters would fib to pollsters. Anyways, despite final polls showing Yes ahead by as much as 5 or 6 points - the No side won 50.4 to 49.6

FWIW journalist Chantal Hebert has just put out a book "The Morning After" about what would have happened if the Yes side had won...its clear that the Yes leaders were very divided amongst themselves and that no one knew what the  they were going to if they won.

I predict that when all is said and done the No side will win by a 2 or 3 points

[DL]

FYI, there was no national election in the UK between 1935 and 1945 due to WW2, BUT during the war a National Government was formed with Labour cabinet ministers along side Tories

[DL]

There are certainly some parallels, DL. At least the campaign has not been as bitter as that in Quebec. Interesting post.

It helps that you don't have 80% of Scots speaking Gaelic at home and demanding linguistic protections etc...

[DL]

I think the EU makes a difference. It makes it significantly less risky for Scotland to separate. Also I doubt there are as many shy unionists as shy federalists. Its hardly uncool to be unionist.

First of all, aren't there all kinds of questions about Scotland having to join the EU as a new member? In '95 people were told that Quebec would still have free trade with the US and use the Canadian dollar...the point is that No = safety and Yes = uncharted territory and if there is one thing we have learned from polling throughout the western world in recent years its that final polls tend to underestimate support for the status quo (ie: incumbent government or No in any referendum)...look at how much better Labour did compared to what the final polls said in 2010.

Anyways, i could be wrong but i predict No will do a bit better than the final polls and win by a few points.

[DL]

I think that the effect will - rather obviously - be there, but it will be smaller than in Quebec. If the yes side gets a 4% lead (and that's far from impossible now that they have momentum), I think that's enough.

First of all we have ONE poll showing Yes ahead by 2% and another with No ahead by 4%...and "momentum" is a bit of a myth. I have been polling and observing elections/referenda for the last 35 years and for all the talk about momentum and "jumping on a bandwagon" - more often than not when polls show one side surging ahead, the public often has second thoughts and backs away and whoever seemed to have this so-called "momentum" ends up doing a bit worse than predicted when the votes are counted. No one could possibly have LESS "momentum" than Gordon Brown in 2010 and yet look at how much better he did than the final polls all projected...and look at how all of Nick Clegg's momentum turned out to be a wet firecracker the moment the exit polls were announced.

[DL]

Don't forget "yes" was winning right before the Quebec referendum too.

...and not just by 2% in one poll that could be an outlier - a whole series of polls had Yes well ahead in Quebec in 1995

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995#Opinion_polling

[DL]

A slightly off-topic question for the Canadian posters:

What %age of Quebec voters support sovereignity now ?

It has fallen dramatically in recent years and now only about 30-35% would vote Yes in another referendum. The pro-independence Bloc Quebecois was annhilated in the last federal election going from 50 out of 75 Quebec seats in Ottawa to just 4...and then the PQ was crushed in the provincial election election this spring largely because people were afraid they would call another referendum. Its always risky to say "separatism is dead", but the conventional wisdom is that the whole Quebec independence movement is now on life support and is only a past time of an age cohort of baby boomers who associate with with their glory days in the 1970s.

[DL]

I'm still convinced that NO will get about 1% more than the average of final polls since people who decide on referendum day will skew towards the status quo...If you haven't made up your mind to vote Yes by the big day - you will likely be a NO

[DL]

Is that based on raw Labour vote share or on margin over the Tories because only from the 70s on did Scotland become a 4 party system with the Snp as a factor...we interesting to see that table comparing the Tory vote in Scotland in every election to their UK wide percentage . I read that as recently as the 50s, the Tories actually did a bit BETTER in Scotland than in England

[DL]

Denmark is part of the EU, an independent Scotland would want to be and Norway is adamantly not part of the EU - no way you could create a common currency for a mix of country some in and some out of the EU

[DL]

Why wouldn't an independent Scotland simply use the Euro - like Ireland?

[DL]

The referendum is nothing to do with popular sovereignty. It is a device which will be used by Parliament to form a future decision on Scottish independence. Everyone accepted 50%+1, probably because this isn't some limit on imperfect representative democracy but a consultative exercise of everyone eligible to vote. Denying independence on, say, a 65% vote would have consequences. It's questionable to argue that a 51% victory would reflect ephemeral, transient whims, whereas a 51% slim defeat reflects earnest, longstanding consensus.

Actually since the elderly are the most solid No voters you could argue that a small defeat is a lot more transient than a small Yes victory.

That's what everyone said in Quebec after the 1995 referendum but it hasn't turned out that way and the youngest cohort today are totally disinterested in independence

[DL]

The objective of Scottish nationalism has mainly been to be able to create a society dominated by centre-left values and get contol of the local economy. Unless the political culture in England swings heavily to the left this is unlikely to be feasible in Britain at large, so that motive will remain relevant.

Actually for a long time a big part of the sovereignist project in Quebec has been built around a sort of cultural narcissism of "we are these enlightened social democratic, post-modern environmentalists in Quebec being dragged down by all those mouth breathing rednecks in the rest of Canada"...but now Canada is governed by the Conservatives who are even more unpopular in Quebec than the British Tories are in Scotland...and yet somehow that doesn't work. Even with a very rightwing federal government with almost no Quebec representation - support for Quebec independence has faded badly and in desperation the sovereignist movement has gotten into xenophobic immigrant bashing etc...

What happens to the zest for independence in Scotland in a few years when all the North Sea oil runs out and Scotland no longer deludes itself into thinking it can afford to go it alone?