Polls and what they can seem to say…

This piece in the Guardian notes that there’s some degree of euroscepticism in Scotland amongst the population there, but I wonder does it very slightly place a hand on the scales. For example:

The publicly funded survey, done late last year by the social research institute ScotCen, said that more than two-thirds of voters were critical of the EU: 25% wanted to leave the EU entirely while another 42% wanted to reduce its powers.
The survey also found that 46% of Scots wanted independence – the highest level this study had recorded, and closely mirroring the findings of commercial opinion polls. But it showed that 21% of those pro-independence voters still wanted to quit the EU, while 41% wanted its powers cut, suggesting a majority of yes voters were unhappy with the EU’s influence and reach.

It would be useful to know the dates the survey was taken. But it is worth keeping in mind the results of the actual Brexit referendum where in Scotland 62% voted to Remain and 38% voted to Leave. And curbing some of the powers of the EU is not quite the same as wanting to leave the EU. Indeed I think there’s a lot of us here who might agree with that proposition – even if we want the EU ultimately replaced or utterly reformed (whichever is achievable) by a more progressive entity.

And if one takes that into account then suddenly one can see that support for EU membership is actually higher now than it was at the referendum – at 75%.

Yet the framing of the story is precisely the opposite.

But even more interesting is the following:

Sturgeon insisted on Monday that the Scottish National party still believed Scotland’s best interests lay in full EU membership, but she and other senior party figures have made clear they could yet drop that plan in order to win the independence vote.
Aware of growing Euroscepticism among yes voters, they floated the alternative option of joining the European Free Trade Association instead – a model known as the Norway option and one that key interest groups, such as Scotland’s vocal fishing industry, could support. That would allow full access to the single market and free movement of people, while allowing Scotland to retain control over its substantial and lucrative fish stocks.

I think that would be a sensible approach to be honest, a stepping stone perhaps to full EU membership in the future, but in the interim allowing the Scottish people to decide for themselves and remaining true to the arguments made before and after the Brexit referendum by the SNP.