When I saw the large sample poll suggesting a 56% to 44% lead for Yes, by Hanbury Strategy, it rang bells. I felt sure there was something dark about them.
Our Corruption Correspondent, Annie McIndoe, was on the ball again and shared this with me:
Here’s an extract:
A lobbying firm run by allies of Dominic Cummings was handed a contract worth £900,000 to conduct public opinion polling on the coronavirus pandemic. The contract was awarded to Hanbury Strategy without any advertisement or competitive tender process. And it was awarded to Hanbury despite the fact that – as our sworn evidence discloses – Hanbury was ill-suited to do the bulk of the work and would have had to subcontract it to others. That sworn evidence also suggests that the price paid by Government was “absolutely off the chart”.
Then, I went back through the TuS archives and found this in October 2020:
In one of the most bizarre suggestions from a supposed ‘think-tank‘, Hanbury, commissioned by an increasingly anxious Conservative Government to think of new ways to counter the surge in support for independence has come up with the idea of ‘pressuring the European Union to nix (sic) the idea of Scotland re-joining the bloc as an independent country.’ Reported in Bloomberg, yesterday, the authors argue against any aggressive, full-frontal attack on the SNP or the wider movement, suggesting it would be counter-productive. Wow! What a stunning insight! Instead, they recommend ‘Operation Sneaky Gove’, making the SNP ‘pay the price‘ for running a devolved administration and ‘co-opting the EU into demonstrating that there is no viable pathway to renewed membership.‘
And this in June 2020:
The YouGov/Hanbury poll [getting a No lead of 1%] in February used a non-standard question and did not include 16/17 year-old’s, so can be ignored. The YouGov poll on January 22nd also did not include 16/17 year-old’s.
So, no friends of the Yes campaign?
Now, they find this:
In a quietly released poll by Hanbury Strategy, with a large weighted sample of 3 884 Scots over 16, on 1st March the results were Yes 56% and No 44%. For the male sample of 1 903, the lead was even greater at 57% to 43%. Perhaps most striking is the huge lead for Yes among the younger voters; 81% to 19% for the 25 to 34 years olds, for example. This is a very large sample, more than three times bigger than most and therefore significantly more reliable.
What is going on here? Boris did sack him. Hell hath no fury greater than an Eton schoolboy scorned?
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
Smoke and mirrors again from the devious crew down south.
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Does “weighted” mean different things according to who commissions poll?
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No Bob, it’s a way that pollsters use to make their polls more accurate according to the numbers asked. This one was heavily weighted as they’d asked over 4,000 people. (Quite unusual). Average polls are usually a touch over 1,000 people … My weighted answer is a bit of an over simplification, so here’s a good reference https://decodedscience.org/the-weighting-game-how-poll-results-are-calculated/
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I think it’s fairly standard to take account of different turnouts on the day of age groups, part supporters etc.
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No Bob, & the methodology will be the same. Weighting is merely correcting to take account of how likely any group is likely to vote.
If you take 50 people at 70 plus & another 50 under 20, you’ll get polarised views on many subjects & they’ll more or less cancel each other out. For example, if the seniors go 40:10 & the juniors go 10:40, your polling would superficiality indicate a 50:50 tie. But since seniors are far more likely to actually vote, say 80% & juniors 60%, the polling company would multiply the figures by ⅘ & ⅗ respectively. Giving 32:8 & 6:24 > 38:32 on a 70% turnout, a more realistic answer.
So outfits, like Scotland in Union, that know a standard question will not provide the outcome they want, will ask non-standard questions. Leave or remain, instead of yes or no in SiU commissioned polls, relies on a few people being confused (leave, remain being firmly associated with the EUref) thus generating the outcome they’re looking for. Nevertheless, the polling company would still weight the result, unless, of course, the poll doesn’t ask about intention to vote; the Scotland on Sunday poll notoriously didn’t.
It’s not unreasonable to conclude that SiU & SoS didn’t really care about the real position, they were going through the motions, to buy negative headlines, to use against the indy movement or the SNP.
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A further lowdown on Hanbury … “#Hanbury_Strategy is a Tory-led lobbying firm set up by ex-David Cameron adviser Ameet Gill and Brexit campaigner and former British Bankers’ Association director, Paul Stephenson in September 2016.
Lizzie Loudon, former press sec to Theresa May. ………… So who commissioned this poll? Remember a while back that UKGov commissioned a poll rumoured to show a lead for YES which they refused to publish
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Thanks
So why did they release this one?
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Yes it’s rather weird John – I guess we assume it was Hanbury who did the non-disclosed one around 12 months ago – as you say “bizarre” Frankly, I don’t think for one minute that the EU will buy this rubbish. In fact, I’m more inclined to think that they’ll encourage us (Scotland) in our Referendum, independence efforts rather than “close viable pathways” The UKGov is not exactly flavour of the Month with the EU. I know you follow the polls as do I, so whilst discounting the recent “fake” ones 56% whilst cheering also looks a bit out of proportion … very intriguing as to what they’re up to – grasping at straws?
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Cummings was close to Gove when he was Education Secretary (SPAD I think).
I had a funny feeling after he would end up in Goves ‘Union Unit’ after Boris Johnson ‘sacked’ him as his senior advisor.
I suspect his Vote Leave experience is to be utilised and he will be the ‘brains’ behind the next No Campaign in any future Indy Ref.
His previous experience:
Campaign director at Business for Sterling, the campaign against the UK joining the Euro, 1999-2002
Director of Strategy for Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith for eight months in 2002
Founded The New Frontiers Foundation, a free-market libertarian Eurosceptic anti BBC and Civil Service reform think tank which grew out of Business For Sterling in December 2003 – 2005
Cummings was a key figure in North East Says No (NESNO) the successful campaign against a North-East Regional Assembly in 2004
Cummings was in a position of what Andrew Neil called “overall responsibility” for the website of The Spectator 2006
Special adviser to Education Secretary Michael Gove, 2010–2014
Campaign Director of Vote Leave, 2015–2016
Chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 2019–2020
He has also been a believer in a UK version of FOX News – which now looks likely to be A Neils new news channel – and using social media to shift the centre of policy argument.
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Illegal political corruption. At the heart of the Tories. Led by a compulsive manipulative liar. Liars always get found out. Embezzling and misusing £Billions of public monies. Crimes too numerous to mention. The Courts have to sort them out. The electorate will chuck them out. The damage they are doing to the economy and killing people. Evel people.
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Candidly, the focus should not be restricted to Hanbury Strategy the company who ‘released’ the polling results. I recommend close attention also on those who partnered with or commissioned Hanbury and its polling, namely the Tory think tank Onward. Based on the polling evidence and other research Onward has just published a report entitled ‘State of the Union’.
Source: https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/stateoftheunion-5.pdf
I hope the polling data will be subject to expert statistical validation and assessment e.g. on Scot Goes Pop. However, the report is well worth a read too. The authors try their best to reassure about the risks to the UK but frankly much of the content must make for a very scary read for those of a Unionist persuasion!
Whilst there is the material worth reading, the report seems to be offering up the re-establishment of a ‘sense of Britishness’ as the cure to the UK’s constitutional ills:
“The Union will be secured when national identities can be genuinely reconciled with a broader, complementary British identity. ..”.
GENUINELY reconciled?!!!
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Do not believe any polls they are all manipulated
Do not believe that a poll that is weighted is always sighted in the same way
England’s propaganda war on Scotland is yet to reach full force
Sometimes a positive action is used to fool you and is followed by a very negative action
The plan is to disrupt
Good cop bad cop
Here’s a cigarette followed by water boarding
Westminster invented them
Know your enemy
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