Salmond Vs. Darling; The Real Results, The Real Lies.

 

 

The televised debate went exactly as all televised debates do. Neither side really managed to claim a clear victory. Both parties pressed home on some of their opponents weaker points. Salmond left himself over-exposed on the currency issue, which is creating a needless weak spot in the YES campaign. Darling was exposed for being unable to make a positive case for staying in the union or to categorically list extra powers that would be granted to Scotland.

Salmond mentioned Trident, but Darling didn’t engage on the issue and it has been swept aside in the analysis that followed. The media would rather keep pandering to the idea that there are “too many unanswered questions,” despite an abundance of answered questions, rather than enter into a real discussion about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to vote for nuclear disarmament in September.

And there is a reason for that avoidance, But I’ll come back to it in a wee while.

Firstly a trip down memory lane. Back in 2010 there were three televised debates in the run-up to the UK general election. David Cameron and Nick Clegg both had a chance to show their stuff against the defending champion of fail, Gordon Brown. The only person to really shine across the debates was Clegg. He raised his profile by (approximately) a billion percent and used the screen time as a springboard into the election. Brown, for his part, gave the viewers a fair amount of substance and policy, but showed himself to be uncomfortable in front of the cameras and gave off the impression of a man who was going to have a wee cry in the toilet as soon as the lights went out. David Cameron was pretty weak throughout. He was out-styled by Clegg and out-substanced by Brown.

The odd thing that happened was that the media announced Cameron to be the winner of each debate. The following days newspapers, read in workplace canteens, on the buses, or even scanned in passing in the shop, all declared David Cameron to effectively be the most competent of the three. The debates themselves didn’t matter. They most likely played a part in getting Nick Clegg into a position to make his deal with the devil, but nothing else that happened on that stage mattered and the people who watched it didn’t sway the election.

What did change it was that media response. This is where elections on this scale are won and lost; the people who don’t watch the debates but who read about them in passing at work the next day. The people who vote based on popular assumptions and common knowledge. And no amount of televised debates, no amount of chapping on doors, is going to change that.

It’s not what happened that counts. It’s what people are told happened.

So, back to the present. Back to last night and the debate on the Scottish Independence Referendum, between Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, and between the head of the Better Together campaign, Alistair Darling. It was an odd combination on any logical basis. Either the Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, decided he was above debating with the First Minister of Scotland, or it was accepted that the head of Yes Scotland, Blair Jenkins, wasn’t worthy of sharing the platform with his opposite number on the campaign trail.

There’s no point me going into an extended analysis of what went on. People know my bias in this. I’m voting Yes. Despite not being a supporter of the SNP and not having any great like for Alex Salmond, I still predictably feel that he came out slightly on top in the exchange, and people reading this who lean towards a No vote will most likely lean towards Darling as the victor.

None of that matters.

What matters is that there was a poll conducted immediately after the debate by ICM. If you didn’t know the details of the how or the why, by now you will have seen a version of the results. Every media outlet picked up on it. After the debate I sat through an hour of televised analysis on STV that was framed around the results, and around the notion that the poll named Darling the clear winner. How much of a setback, the analysis is asking, is this for the Yes campaign? Has this become Salmonds “Waterloo,” as Blair McDougall stated on STV (because if there’s one thing Better Together like more than bashing “nationalists,” it’s talking about patriotism and likening the election to military victories.)

So what are people in workplaces, on the buses, and in newsagent going to see tomorrow?

“Darling wins round one,” says the Daily Record. “Alex Salmond flounders,” goes the line in the Daily Mail. The independent declares that it was “First blood to Alistair Darling.” The New Statesman confidently declares that, “Salmond needed a win, but it was Darling who triumphed.“

All of this is backed up by the proof that the ICM poll showed Darling to be the clear victor. The New Statesman piece states that Darling won by 56 to 44 which (and this should already ring alarm bells about the data) equates to the nations current split on the referendum issue. The Daily Telegraph quotes the same figures. As do the Guardian (though, that should be obvious) and the Daily Mail. Wherever you read the news, you’re seeing Darling’s superiority supported by the findings of that poll.

Well, there’s a problem here. It’s simply not true. But since all of these news outlets put such stock in that one poll, I think we should only play fair and draw our conclusions from the same document.

Let’s take the results from all respondents first, which usually includes people who are unlikely to vote or who won’t share all or some of their intentions.  (Red bits added by me)

 

Incase that isn’t clear, what we have here is the question; “As far as you are concerned, which one of the two leaders do you think won the debate? Please put aside your own party preference and your view on whether or not Scotland should become an independent country, and thus base your answer ONLY on what you saw and heard during the debate.”

Let’s get the obvious bit out of the way. People who identified as Yes before the debate said that Salmond won by 67% to 17% and people who identified as No before the debate gave it to Darling by 78% to 12%. I know, shocking, right? People who have an opinion stuck by that opinion. Both candidates took a tiny bump from people who were now supporting them after the debate.

But here is what you won’t find being talked about in the news. People who identified as undecided before the debate said that Alex Salmond won to the tune of 44 to 36. People who identified as undecided afterwards gave the contest to Salmond by 40 to 14. Leaving a fairly hefty 46% of people who both identified as both undecided on the referendum and on who won the debate.

The next section in the poll results is when they work their political hocus-pocus. Voting intention surveys often show a set of results that exclude people unlikely to vote or who won’t disclose intentions. These are the results are meant to give a clearer idea of intentions as they’re from clearer answers. But then, there are people who pretend this is an actual science and also people who pretend that frozen yoghurt is a good thing. Just roll with it, is what I’m saying. I’m only showing you both sets of results for the sake of a more complete picture.

Again, red bits by me.

 

People who started out undecided say that Salmond won the debate 55% to 45%, which is a fun reversal of the headline stat that the media are using to label Darling the ‘clear winner.’ But then, the fun part, is that people who were undecided even after the debate, the people who still just don’t know which way they’ll vote, even they said that Salmond won, by 74% to 26% Holy crap, No voters, but even the people who still don’t know seem to think your guy lost.

It’s not going to matter, of course. Because the big advantage that Better Together have is that the media are with them. The newspapers and television stations want a No vote. And just as they told the nation that David Cameron won three debates, so they’re now telling Scotland that Darling was the clear victor.

And that matters. Television debates don’t matter. Polls don’t matter. Stats don’t matter. Almost nothing that I’ve written here actually matters. What does matter is that what will be going out into the workplace, into the shops, onto the trains and the buses and into common knowledge, is the stark lie that Better Together won the debate.

And why are they doing that? And why won’t they engage on the Trident issue, as I said earlier? Because of this, because of the one stat from the poll that really matters.

 

 

There are still so many people who are undecided. Anybody who is telling you right now which way this referendum is going to go is simply guessing. There are people out there who will absolutely swing this one way or another. And what they’re going to be seeing are the lies. The spin. The front pages of newspapers.

All of our online waffle is fun and it shows how clever we are. All of the door-chapping is fun, but gets only to people willing to open the door. It’s going to be won or lost in those places I keep mentioning. The discussions at your workplace. On your commute. In your pub or restaurant or comic shop or wherever the hell you find just about anyone who is willing to chat and debate with you.

People who can be told that they have a chance to vote to get rid of nukes from their doorstep. People who can be told they have a chance to vote for the closure of the Dungavel refugee detention centre. People who can be told that, yes, voting for independence does bring big risks. But has any nation that has ever gone independent from Britain ever asked to come back? Did the founding fathers of the United States stop and play nice simply because it was a bit of a risk?

Never talk about religion or politics, the old saying goes.

Well we’ve seen the world that creates.

Fuck that.

We’ve got six weeks.

Talk.