Voodoo polls

You know that feeling where you really, really want to believe something you read or hear, but just can't bring yourself to suspend rational disbelief? Well, there's a poll today in the Daily Mail that puts SNP support at frankly implausible levels - 48%. Progressive Scottish Opinion, who the Daily Mail use, don't subscribe to any kind of basic industry standard for polling. Their poll is 15 years out of date, and uses exactly the same methodology that predicted Neil Kinnock was going to win comfortably in 1992. Opinion polling is a lot harder than just phoning 1,000 random numbers (if PSO even did that many this time - they are noted for 350-strong samples).

Being happy about this bump just means getting deflated later when a more reliable ICM, Populus or Mori poll put the SNP "only" six or seven points up from the election. If I was a cynic I might say that was part of the Daily Mail's intention.

Anyway, I'm more interested in this one, which found gay men and lesbians in the USA to be far more likely to turn out to vote. It's impossible to say whether this translates to the LGBT community over here, but if the 6% of the population who are LGBT are turning out as, say, 9% of the voters, that becomes a quite considerable proportion. It is, for example, given the abnormally low turnout amongst the Roman Catholic community (c. 20% of the population), not too different from turnout by the organised interest currently most antagonistic to LGBT rights. Throw in the tendency of LGBT persons to congregate in particular, metropolitan areas that are swing seats these days (I'm thinking Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvin here), and you really do have food for electoral thought.