THE new Scottish poll from Ipsos marks the end of an era. Three decades ago, the overwhelming majority of opinion polls in Scotland were conducted by telephone, but the long-running series of Ipsos polls for STV has been the only remnant of that tradition to survive to the present day, with virtually all other polls conducted online. The announcement from Ipsos that it has switched to an online method for its new poll may mean that we'll never again see a phone poll of Scottish voting intentions.
That's far more than a dry technical point, because in recent years the unusual Ipsos methodology has produced much better results for both independence and the SNP than most online polls. However, Ipsos hasn't switched wholesale to the methods of rival polling firms, and has instead adopted a hybrid approach of recruiting potential respondents offline, and then interviewing them online. The new poll therefore can't be directly compared to any previous results from any firm, and it will be a major relief for leading figures in the SNP and the Greens that the numbers do not, at least for the most part, represent a radical departure from past Ipsos polling.
The 52% to 48% lead for Yes on the independence question is in fact a marginal improvement on the position shown by the Ipsos poll just over a year ago during the General Election campaign. It's true that there have been far more impressive results for Yes in other Ipsos polls over the years, but nevertheless the new poll offers grounds for optimism that the revised Ipsos methodology will continue to produce more favourable independence numbers than are typically seen from long-standing online firms such as Survation and YouGov, both of which showed a No lead in their most recent polls.
Part of the reason for this ongoing contrast may be that most other pollsters differ from Ipsos in that they insist on weighting their results according to how respondents say they voted in the 2014 independence referendum – a practice that after such a long period of time carries the increasing risk of results being distorted by false recall.
The SNP's 31% vote share in Westminster voting intentions is firmly within their normal range of between 30% and 34% shown in recent months across all polling firms. However, the 22% share for Labour is the second-highest showing for Keir Starmer's party since February, while Reform UK's 16% is markedly lower than the 21% reported by both Survation and Norstat in May.
So it may be that the new Ipsos methodology will be a touch more Labour-friendly, and less Reform-friendly, than conventional online polling. That would make intuitive sense, because Reform supporters are perhaps disproportionately likely to be politically engaged and to sign up for volunteer polling panels. The Ipsos approach of recruiting panellists offline could produce a more realistic measure of where Reform truly stand with the Scottish public.
It's a similar story in voting intentions for next year's Holyrood election, with the SNP's vote share of 34% on the constituency ballot mirroring other recent polls, but with their 11-point lead over Labour being less overwhelming than the leads recently reported by Survation and Norstat, due to a higher Labour vote and a lower Reform vote. A more significant cause for concern for John Swinney will be his party's 26% share on the list ballot, which is the second-lowest reported by any pollster this year. That may not matter much if the SNP's double-digit lead in the constituencies is maintained, but the voting system will start to skew heavily in Labour's favour if the lead contracts to low single digits.
In that scenario, the SNP might need to win lots of list seats simply to remain the largest party in the Scottish Parliament – and on 26% of the list vote they probably wouldn't be winning enough.
