Plan B Forum

Scottish anxieties on independence revealed in poll

Support for going it alone drops to 32% in Ipsos Mori survey, which compares views on both sides of border

Severin Carrell and Tom Clark
The Guardian, Monday 3 March 2014

The Scots are more anxious than the English and Welsh about the effect of independence on the United Kingdom as a whole, and also worry about Scotland in particular. That is the finding of new Ipsos Mori polling on both sides of the border, which has been exclusively shared with the Guardian.

On Monday, for the first time since December, Ipsos updated its polling on the independence referendum for Scottish TV, charting a very slight widening of the no campaign's advantage. Among voters who say they are certain to turn out in September's independence referendum, an unchanged 57% of Scots say they will vote no, but the proportion who say they will vote yes has dropped two points, from 34% in December to 32% today.

Scottish nationalists had hoped that the joint claim by Ed Balls, Danny Alexander and George Osborne that London would never allow a post-independence currency union was so heavy-handed that it would backfire. But the additional cross-border research, prepared for an Ipsos Mori/Kings College London event , suggests that many Scots harbour deep anxiety about the economic effects of going it alone.