Yes We Didnae survey results, part 2

Welcome to the second set of results from the Yes We Didnae survey into why the Yes side lost the 2014 referendum. Thank you to everyone - Yes and No voters alike - who took the time to share their views.

Having looked at the biggest issues of the campaign in the first post, I'll now examine the key moments of the campaign. More than 1,670 people took the survey, of whom 83% voted Yes. I'll be focusing on the responses from No voters in my next report, and will focus on what Yessers said in this one.

The usual caveat: this is not an opinion poll, it's a survey of a self-selecting group. That said, it provides an in-depth look at what a very large number of engaged Yes voters think.

And a huge "thank you" is due to the kind people who volunteered their time to help me analyse the results. 

Trigger warning: if you're a Yes voter, I'll be revisiting some traumatising experiences. To steel your nerves, you may wish to get yourself a dram, espresso or strong camomile tea (depending on your lifestyle choices).

The Vow

More than 60% of respondents said there was a key moment - and the most mentioned one was The Vow. It's no surprise that The Vow featured so strongly. Splashed across the front page of the Daily Record three days before the vote, in the form of a statement signed by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems and Labour leader Ed Miliband, it promised "extensive new powers" for Holyrood. (In light of recent austerity measures announced by Keir Starmer's Westminster government you might want to check the statement "How much is spent on the NHS will be a matter for the Scottish Parliament" against delivery…)

The vast majority of people who mentioned The Vow saw it as being very influential. The following comments are representative:

• The Vow - it gave everyone the illusion that there could be a halfway house between independence and the status quo without acknowledging there was no desire at UK level to deliver anything of the sort

• The infamous Vow. I think it convinced a lot of people that there was some kind of 'halfway house' that supposedly gave the Scottish Parliament enough powers to make things better, but also made people feel safe by avoiding the supposed risks of independence

• I think the No side regained momentum after the Vow. Brown’s involvement was duplicitous but he was trusted by ex Labour voting Scots

• I know a number of people who were uncertain how to vote and said that made a difference to them. They also said that, if it didn't work out, they would vote yes next time.

The Vow was a powerful intervention that sticks in the memories of Yes voters as being very effective in persuading people to reject independence. Bear that in mind as you read on.

The first TV debate

Another major event that Yes voters gave great prominence to was the first TV debate between Alex Salmond (then First Minister) and Alastair Darling (chair of the No campaign) on STV on 5 August, 2014.

Allow me to digress down memory lane. Before the first debate I spent days on end prepping Yes Scotland's social media response with my superb digital team and Yes Scotland's very smart messaging team, led by the inimitable Stephen Noon. We discussed the key points we needed to get across on the main issues. We then prepped hundreds of carefully scripted social media posts dealing with these from every conceivable angle: memes, graphics, quotes, videos, you name it. 

I then organised all of that content into a vast grid which meant that on the night Stephen or I could call out a code to my team to get a post up almost instantaneously. (G47fb would be, for instance, "health, graphic number 47, to Facebook.") If I say so myself, it was a very clever system and meant we could be incredibly responsive. Because we'd prepped so much content in advance, it also meant one of my team could make video clips on the fly so we could post them too. We also got Yes supporters involved. I teed up the 100,000+ people on the Yes Scotland email list to retweet and repost like crazy, and we got three young, extremely capable volunteers into the office to help during the debate.

Why all the effort? We knew this was a key moment. Alex Salmond was at the top of his game and Alastair Darling was a pretty dour character. This was the Yes side's chance to answer people's doubts and inspire voters. We'd use the enormous advantage we had on social media to amplify every triumphant moment. 

As the appointed hour approached the Comms, Messaging and Digital teams gathered round a central desk and had a last-minute checkin. We were not at home to Mr Cockup and there was total clarity about who was doing what. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing, and trusted them to do it well.

Imagine my surprise then, when the SNP, on this crucial day, organised a party in the reception area of Yes Scotland HQ to celebrate the night's events, complete with video team ready to capture instant reactions and champagne corks popping as their leader demolished Frosty the No man on live telly. (There may or may not have been any champagne at the party. I don't know because I didn't go. I was working.)

Then the debate started and the rest is history. Not good history. Bad history, as in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow sailing on the Titanic to Culloden.

Alex Salmond decided to treat the debate as a performance and came across as a blusterer, getting lost in weak gags about aliens. Alastair Darling played it dead straight and was entirely himself: a sober expert who had run an economy and knew this stuff inside out. He wiped the floor with the then FM. And the walls, and the ceiling, and lastly the screen so the viewer got a really good look. It emphasised entirely all the uncertainty about voting Yes.

It was carnage. The party in the office fell somewhat flat, I believe. Meanwhile, on the digital desk we were firing out content left, right and centre, pushing out our key messages regardless of what was happening on the telly. A No supporter on Twitter accused the Yes Scotland social media account of throwing chaff to disguise the paucity of our guy's performance.

Nae kidding, pal…

I am not alone in viewing the whole thing as a debacle. Here are some representative quotes from what Yessers said in the survey:

• Alistair Darling pinned Alex Salmond on currency in the televised debate

• I think Alistair Darling outperforming Alex Salmond in the televised debates was a real difference maker for Better Together. Alex Salmond did not do well under the economic scrutiny, a line of questioning he should have anticipated from a former chancellor, and used his own time to ask rather arbitrary questions like if Doctor Who and the BBC would still be part of an independent Scotland

• If Yes had put up someone who was not a politician, and certainly not someone as divisive as Alex Salmond, we had the chance to establish a social campaign. Instead it became a political argument between two old men

• Alex Salmond has always been a great debater, up to that stage I'd never rated Alastair Darling as a debater but he brought his A game on those nights. Sadly he owned Alex during the debates, one of the few to ever do so.

That last comment really sums it up. It was one of the great surprises of the campaign that Alex Salmond lost the TV debate. He did much better in the second debate but by then the damage had been done to the credibility of the Yes cause. In that vein, the No side were ruthless in exploiting the key issues as "Alex Salmond versus every expert in the world". Of course, the campaign was never about one person or one performance but the first TV debate plugged seamlessly into the weaknesses in the Yes case.

Currency, again

Here we go again. Currency emerged as the standout issue in the last set of results. Here it is again, like a bad penny (or pound coin). The finance spokespeople of all three Westminster parties said that regardless of who was in government they would not let an independent Scotland use the pound. This moment rammed home a lot of the economic uncertainty, and many respondents were unconvinced by how the Yes side handled this intervention.

• George Osborne coming up to Edinburgh to say "You're not getting the Pound" (and an unconvincing response from the Yes campaign)

• Alistair Darling ridiculing Yes on the currency in the public debate, supported by George Osborne asserting in advance a total refusal on currency union, Bank of England, etc

• When Salmond got bogged down in the matter of currency in the first debate with Darling. That successfully established “currency” in the public mind as a major issue 

• There is no question that Scotland could use the British Pound. Yes failed to convince people that in doing so, it would remain tied to the rest-UK economic/monetary policy - it didn't sound like real independence at all. It was a gift to the No side, who exploited that apparent dichotomy for all it's worth

• Getting caught up in the currency debate. I didn't care whether we kept the £ or not but our politicians never seemed convinced they had an answer to this.

That said, some respondents were energised and even convinced to vote Yes by George Osborne's intervention. Most, however, felt it was damaging to the independence cause, especially because the Yes side did not appear to have any answer beyond: "Oh yes we will use the pound."

What does all this tell us?

The last set of results showed that what stuck in the memories of Yes-voting and No-voting respondents was the issue of currency - a No talking point. Both Yes and No voters said it was the strongest part of the Unionist case. There was no similar standout strongest issue for the Yes side.

Similarly when it comes to key moments in the campaign, the ones cited are No successes, two crafted by them (The Vow and the currency ambush). There was not a powerful, pro-Yes moment which cut through in the same way. 

Now, as many respondents pointed out, the Unionists had the (sometimes unquestioning) support of the media so their activities were always going to get a following wind. However, this is not enough to explain why the three big moments which stick in the memory were successes for them. These moments clearly resonated with perceptions of weakness around the case for Yes.

There was a key Yes moment that got mentioned.. However, it was nothing like as frequently cited: the Scottish Government White Paper, "Scotland's Future". 

I'll be really candid, when I first saw the White Paper (which was when it was published, not before) my first reaction was "Is that it?". Instead of a copper-bottomed, definitive piece of research which gave chapter and verse on the core issues, it was 600 pages of airy assertion. It seemed like it was written so politicians could deflect questions by saying "Well, we answered that on Page 237."

I wasn't alone in being underwhelmed as these response show:

• I think the white paper in general had a lot of holes in terms of the economic arguments for a Yes vote

• Meanwhile the Scot Gov wasted their time and money with the white paper that few read,

• Boring, tone deaf and bereft of any excitement or new ideas. 

A couple of respondents did find the White Paper inspirational and helpful when having conversations but they were in the minority.

What all this tells us is that, as befits Project Fear, the No side had a very clear strategy for highlighting uncertainty, especially through the medium of currency, and were very effective at finding mechanisms for ramming that home.  

On the Yes side, there was no "one big thing" issue or moment to treat in the same way. That was not necessarily a mistake. There is no one, single reason for wanting to put Scotland's future in Scotland's hands. (See that? Ten years on and I’m still on message.)  Also, I am not going to sit here 10 years after the event, with the advice of 1,600+ people and say that colleagues got it wrong at the time. I saw how smart they were and how hard they worked. Hindsight is always 20:20.

However, not focusing on "one big thing" left Yes open to questions around uncertainty.

There is a trap in all this, however. Several respondents pointed out that the campaign got bogged down in a debate about currency ("it had never been in all the many previous indy movements worldwide") rather than about the power to make our own decisions.  A question for those of us on the Yes side to ponder is this: how do we answer specific questions about independence without the campaign for independence becoming bogged down in specifics?

Still to come:

I'll soon be sending out updates on:

• What No voters have said so far

• Yessers’ experiences of the campaign 

• What 'next?

Thank you very much for reading and taking part.

A' the best

Stewart