Hung, drawn and quartered

The pollsters have been busy. Firstly (unsurprisingly) a couple of Scottish independence polls, with YouGov/Times recording 57-43 for No, and Survation/Mail 53-47 for No. Both of these exclude undecided voters, and both are within the margin of error of the 2014 result.
We also got a John Curtice report from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey series. On paper, this should be the most reliable gauge of public opinion, because it’s a gold standard probability survey rather than a conventional poll.
The trouble is, this type of survey is slow, both to conduct, and in this particular case to be published. The fieldwork would mostly have been last summer, in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. So although the 46 per cent supporting independence was an all-time high, it was done (or at least started) when polls also had support for secession at an all-time high.
Taking all of this evidence together, there isn’t much sign of where things are now being much different from where they were two-and-a-half years ago.
The Times also has GB-wide YouGov voting intention poll, showing the Conservative lead dropping a couple of points to 17. Perhaps more interesting was that UKIP slipped into single digits for the first time in this poll since February 2013, putting them fourth behind the Lib Dems.
Now then. Two years ago I heard it said that if the 2010 UK election result was a hung parliament, then 2015 was about to produce a “hung, drawn and quartered” parliament. In the event that didn’t happen, but something at least as messy is taking shape today in the Netherlands. You can read my thoughts on that, and why the Dutch pollsters might be a bit nervous about it, on the website.
Polls close at 21:00 CET (20:00 GMT) on the Dutch mainland and Ipsos will have an exit poll. Results will then come in through the night.

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