{"id":818,"date":"2014-04-29T09:06:41","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T09:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/?p=818"},"modified":"2018-07-06T14:37:22","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T14:37:22","slug":"whowilldecide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/whowilldecide\/","title":{"rendered":"Who will decide the referendum outcome?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Nicola McEwen, University of Edinburgh<\/p><\/div>\n

Nicola McEwen reflects\u00a0on reports that voters of non-Scottish origins\u00a0will play a decisive role in the referendum vote at The Conversation<\/a>, noting that the emphasis on country of origin in analysing voting intention is misplaced.<\/em><\/p>\n

The latest\u00a0ICM poll<\/a>\u00a0made delightful reading for the yes campaign the other day. It showed a split of 52\/48 against independence (42\/39 once we factor the \u201cdon\u2019t knows\u201d back in), suggesting that the yes campaign needed only a two percentage point swing to reach a majority. The once buoyant Better Together campaigners look decidedly more worried these days.<\/p>\n

There is still a long way to go before the poll in September, but recent polls increasingly suggest that the result may be close. This would make it easy to conclude that should a particular group of people be more inclined to vote yes or no, it would have a decisive impact on the result.<\/p>\n

The point is, we can draw many correlations to illustrate the constitutional preferences of different categories of voters. But to do so would shed little light on understanding why people will vote yes or no.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

Last weekend\u00a0Scotland on Sunday suggested<\/a>\u00a0in response to the ICM poll that the decisive group in question could be \u201cthe 460,000 people who live in Scotland but were born in England\u201d (or at least those 16 and over who are eligible to vote).<\/p>\n

The ICM poll suggested that just 28% of them say they will vote yes compared to 58% who intend to vote no. They contrasted this with those born in Scotland who appear to marginally favour independence by 42% to 40%.<\/p>\n

But why focus on country of origin? This seems an entirely arbitrary and potentially provocative demographic feature to pinpoint \u2013 one which is of little relevance in a campaign in which issues of ethnicity and even national identity are largely absent.<\/p>\n

Demographic pick and mix<\/h2>\n

We can point to any number of demographic characteristics to suggest that a particular group could swing the result either way, and in numbers which would carry much more weight than the 9% of Scots born in England.<\/p>\n

What about the 51% of Scots who are women? The same poll indicated that just 35% of women would vote yes compared to 44% of men. Once you exclude the don\u2019t knows, a majority of men in this poll expressed support for independence, but the female vote would produce a no outcome.<\/p>\n

Or should we single out the 1.5 million Scots who are older than 65? They are markedly more opposed to independence than any other age group. Or perhaps the decisive group will be the ABC1 voters, only 35% of whom in the ICM poll said they\u2019d vote yes, compared to the 42% of the working and lower-middle class (53% once we exclude the don\u2019t knows) voters.<\/p>\n

Or the power to determine the outcome might be seen to lie in the hands of those in the north east or the south of Scotland, who are notably less enthusiastic in their support of independence than those from the other regions sampled.<\/p>\n

The point is, we can draw many correlations to illustrate the constitutional preferences of different categories of voters. But to do so would shed little light on understanding why people will vote yes or no.<\/p>\n

Parizeau\u2019s faux pas<\/h2>\n

When in 1995 the voters of Quebec came within a whisker of voting for independence, then premier Jacques Parizeau\u00a0infamously placed the blame<\/a>\u00a0for the defeat on \u201cl’argent puis des votes ethniques<\/em>\u201d \u2013 money and the ethnic vote. That comment, more than the result itself, led to his immediate resignation from a party that had at that time worked hard to promote itself as an inclusive civic nationalist party.<\/p>\n

The Scottish National Party has done even more to champion the cause of civic nationalism. With groups such as\u00a0New Scots for Independence<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Scots Asians for Yes<\/a>, it has long sought to present Scotland as a multi-cultural nation and independence as a project for everyone resident in Scotland, irrespective of where they were born and bred.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Independence White Paper<\/a>\u00a0proposes an inclusive citizenship policy, emphasising that \u201ca commitment to a multi-cultural Scotland will be a cornerstone of the nation on independence\u201d. And it is a credit to both sides in this campaign that neither has sought to play an ethnic card.<\/p>\n

Neither has sought to define categories or degrees of Scottishness. We can be confident that this inclusive approach will be carried forward into the period after the referendum, whatever the result. Rocks would melt in the sun before the Scottish first minister expressed a reaction similar to that of the former Quebec premier.<\/p>\n

The ESRC\u00a0Future of the UK and Scotland<\/a>\u00a0programme will be conducting an academic survey during and after the referendum to try to understand why people voted yes or no, and the identities, attitudes and events that helped to shape their voting behaviour.<\/p>\n

Previous referendum and election surveys would suggest that demographic characteristics \u2013 age, region, gender or country of origin \u2013 are unlikely to represent the decisive factor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicola McEwen reflects\u00a0on reports that voters of non-Scottish origins\u00a0will play a decisive role in the referendum vote at The Conversation, noting that the emphasis on country of origin in analysing voting intention is misplaced. The latest\u00a0ICM poll\u00a0made delightful reading for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/referendum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}