Election analysis by YouGov and New York Times
THE elderly did not rob the young of an independent Scotland, according to YouGov’s final poll of how Scotland voted in the independence referendum.
Their study of 3,188 voters showed that 51 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24 voted ‘No’. It also revealed that more than one in five SNP supporters turned their backs on independence. The breakdown has come from YouGov’s referendum night poll that predicted a ‘No’ win with 54 per cent of the vote. Some 55.3 per cent voted against independence in the official vote. A postreferendum poll of 2,000 conducted by Lord Ashcroft said that 71 per cent of 16-17-year-olds and 48 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds voted ‘Yes’, giving ammunition to Yes supporters that the young were being deprived of an independent Scotland by their older peers. However, only 14 people in that age group responded to the survey. The YouGov poll found:
Only eight per cent of Tory voters supported independence while 27 per cent of Labour supporters and 29 per cent of Liberal Democrats voted ‘Yes’. Out of five age groups only the 25-39-yearolds supported a ‘Yes’ with 55 per cent backing independence. The biggest supporters of ‘No’ were voters over 65, with two in every three preferring to stay within the UK.
Some 55 per cent of 60-65-yearolds and 53 per cent of 40-59-year-olds backed Better Together. A total of 74 per cent of those voters who were born elsewhere in the UK voted ‘No’. Some 51 per cent of Scots-born voters supported independence. The poll also found twice as many voters said Yes campaign activists at polling stations were acting unreasonably, at six per cent, to No’s three per cent.
The decision to allow the 16 and 17-year-olds to have the vote in the referendum was hailed by the now outgoing First Minister Alex Salmond in his concession speech. He declared the involvement of Scotland’s youngest voters in the referendum a ‘resounding success’.
The full breakdown of the YouGov poll is available at http://yougov.co.uk/ news/2014/09/19/scottish-independencefinal-prediction/
The full breakdown of the referendum vote including local authority areas can be viewed at http://scotlandreferendum.info/
In Scotland and Beyond, a Crisis of Faith in the Global Elite
Neil Irwin of the New York Times has given us this analysis of the state of the US and the connection that it has with Scotland’s predicament (see link http:// nyti.ms/1Dpfwcl).
In Scotland this week, a measure to become an independent country and end the United Kingdom as we know it failed, but it would have succeeded with a swing of just 5 percent of the vote. Earlier in the week, a right-wing anti-immigration party in Sweden claimed its largest-ever share of parliamentary votes. And in the United States, new census data released this week showed that middle-income American families made 8 percent less last year, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 2007. What these stories have in common is this: they lay bare a crisis of faith in the global elite.
There has been an implicit agreement in modern democracies by which it is fine for the wealthy and powerful to enjoy private jets and outlandishly expensive homes so long as the mass of people also see steadily rising standards of living. Only the first part of that bargain has been met, and voters are expressing their frustration in ways that vary depending on the country but that have in common a sense that the established order isn’t serving them. Democracy is not working any more. Many do not bother to vote. All politicians seem locked in. It is all about PR and making impressions and…
In Britain, a Labour government led by a Scottish prime minister (Gordon Brown) and his Scottish finance minister (Alistair Darling) supported the so-called financialization of the British economy, with the rise of global megabanks in an increasingly cosmopolitan London as the centre of the economic strategy. Then, in 2008, the banks nearly collapsed and were bailed out, and the British economy hasn’t been the same. That economic failure ushered in a coalition government in 2010 that is even less aligned with the Scots’ preferred policies, bringing an age of austerity when the Scots would prefer to widen the social safety net.