Fingers point at Auntie after the UK's "Near Death Experience"Edinburgh - 19th September 2014Anti-separation chiefs were jubilant last night as the "Better Together" campaign sealed an epic referendum victory, securing Scotland's place in the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future.  But in the cold light of morning, attention has started to turn to the wafer-thin margin by which the win...

Savanta ComRes poll, 14th-18th January 2021:Should Scotland be an independent country?Yes 50% (+2)No 50% (-2)More details and analysis to follow shortly...

Hi, I'm James Kelly, and I'm the author of the pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop. It's one of the most-read and also one of the oldest pro-independence websites in Scotland. It began way back in 2008, but gained in popularity in 2013 when I launched the Scot Goes Pop Poll of Polls for voting intentions in the independence referendum. I had become quite cynical about the way...

Click here to go straight to the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser page for 2022.It's more or less exactly two years since Scot Goes Pop commissioned its first opinion poll. It was a very successful exercise, showing that the impact of the December 2019 general election result had taken the pro-independence vote to its highest level since just after the Brexit referendum in the summer of...

The election leaflets are going to write themselves, aren't they?"I don't think Douglas Ross is a big figure.""He's in Elgin. LOL."— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 12, 2022 The controversial journalist David Leask may be surprised to learn that I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of Russian history. But one thing I do know is that Bloody Sunday in 1905 was the pivotal moment when the...

“I intend to do everything that’s within my power to enable that referendum to happen before the end of 2023”Watch the First Minister’s full interview on #ScotNight at 10.40pm pic.twitter.com/B1XTZA7usF— ScotlandTonight (@ScotlandTonight) January 10, 2022 The clarity of language was becoming more encouraging, but this is a step backwards. "Everything in my power" could be...

Back in the days when Scotland had a clear-cut four party system, there was sometimes a debate over whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that there was only one pro-independence party, and three unionist parties.  And the answer was of course that it could be either good or bad, depending on context.  In a first-past-the-post election, it was a huge advantage, because it meant that...

Chris Hanlon left a comment on my previous post about his support for a multi-option referendum featuring a Devo Max option.  I initially thought it was a spoof comment because it contained the line "DevoMinMax is the minimum devolution I can consent to", but I see from Mr Hanlon's opinion piece in The National that he does actually use the word "DevoMinMax", so it may well have genuinely...

I may be quite unusual among independence supporters in that I would be inclined to take Devo Max if it was genuinely on offer.  I've always been more interested in the concrete reality of self-government than in metaphysical concepts like sovereignty.  For example, any one of the federal states of Austria (such as Salzburg) is theoretically more "sovereign" than the devolved territory...

Scot Goes Pop commissioned three full-scale polls on independence during 2021, two from Panelbase and one from Survation - but in total there were no fewer fifty-three independence polls over the course of the year, across all polling firms and all clients.  I was surprised to find it was as many as that, although of course a lot of them were clustered during the Holyrood election...

A warm welcome to 2022, the year in which - if Nicola Sturgeon keeps the promise she made to the SNP conference - the "process will be initiated" to enable an independence referendum to be held by the end of 2023.  Since the conference, Mhairi Hunter and Pete Wishart have both underscored that promise - Hunter by saying that the result of the 2024 Westminster election is essentially...

Peter A Bell is justly recognised as a national treasure - and a firm favourite with the kids, as you can see from the classic poster above.  It's always a very special treat when he sends me a novel-length diatribe and then "warns" me that he will be publishing it on Facebook or on his blog as a "precaution" just in case I "censor" him.  That's the type of fearsome threat that makes...

It's somehow been forgotten in the mists of time that Scot Goes Pop once had a regular 'Word-Search Wednesday' puzzle feature.  (The Denis MacShane word-search was my all-time favourite, although the Councillor Terry Kelly word-search was a close second.)  As it's the festive period, and as it's ACTUALLY WEDNESDAY, I thought I'd revive the tradition for one night only with a word-search...

Toni Giugliano, the SNP's unsuccessful constituency candidate in Dumbarton, posted three rather unwise tweets about the Alba party yesterday - including one in which he unwittingly gave the game away about his own lack of knowledge about Scotland's electoral systems."Imagine running a council election campaign against one of the most marginalised groups in society. WTF is wrong with these...

For those of you who still wear your WWJD bracelets, you need wonder no longer, because the great man's latest blogpost leaves little doubt that the answer to the question is: give up, throw in the towel.  In fact, Jeggit isn't just giving up on independence for the fabled "generation", but for two generations, judging from his comment about how our grandchildren might yet get it right.Does...

So I've got my wish - the Opinium poll for the Sunday Mail contains independence referendum voting intention numbers, so at last we have an opportunity to judge the impact of the Downing Street party on the state of play.  But actually the results have ended up muddying the waters somewhat.Should Scotland be an independent country? (Opinium, 15th-22nd December 2021)Yes 50% (-1)No 50%...

Bizarrely, given that it's currently either Christmas Day or Boxing Day (depending on your point of view), there's a poll out.  It's in the Sunday Mail, and so far all I know is what's contained on the front page of the paper, which is very little.  No indication of which polling company was used (although I suspect it might have been Survation, because the Sunday Mail have used them...

Because Wings Over Scotland has theoretically shut up shop, I haven't been keeping an eye on the site, and I was surprised to discover today that there have been a couple of brief updates since I last checked.  One of them is a thoroughly disturbing result from a Panelbase poll commissioned by Wings.  It found that 26% of Scottish voters want the presumption of innocence to be abolished...

So make that a hat-trick.  The Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll on GRA reform in October showed a massive majority against legally-recognised gender self-ID, as did a Survation poll a few days ago for the policy analysis organisation Murray Blackburn Mackenzie.  Now there's also a brand new multi-question Panelbase poll commissioned by For Women Scotland which has produced the same...

It's been a long time since I've written a blogpost specifically about the pandemic, but there's something that's been bothering me over the last couple of days, and it would probably take more than a tweet or two to make the point properly.  The BBC have a "health correspondent" called Nick Triggle - essentially he's a pro-virus propagandist who since early 2020 has pumped out article after...