Women and Alex Salmond: An academic postscript...

Last week, I took a skeptical look at the received wisdom, echoed most recently by the Economist magazine, that women in Scotland aren't terrifically keen on Alex Salmond. Trawling through polls going back to 2009, and looking at how satisfaction with his performance broke down by gender, I argued that the data suggests something of an "enthusiasm gap" for the First Minister.  Men like him more than women, but Scottish women did not assess his activities in Bute House significantly more negatively than Scottish men.  He comfortably drubs Cameron, Miliband, Clegg, Davidson, Rennie and Lamont amongst both men and women.

In response, one of the authors directed my attention towards a paper very recently published in the academic journal, Political Parties. For those interested and able to access it, the precise citation is: Robert Johns, Lynn Bennie and James Mitchell (2012) ‘Gendered nationalism: The gender gap in support for the Scottish National Party’ Party Politics 18(4) 581 – 601.  The piece focusses on the Holyrood election result of 2007.  According to the Scottish Election Survey for that year, 35% of men voted for the SNP on the regional list, compared to 27% of women. As we saw in the preliminary data released from the 2011 Scottish Election Survey, the SNP managed to close this gap to just 3% in the most recent Holyrood ballot, with 43% of women and 46% of men voting for the Nationalists on the list respectively.

Bracketing these recent developments, the Political Parties article examines alternative explanations for the gap we saw in 2007. (Johns, Bennie and Mitchell's conclusion, incidentally, is that men are more likely than women to vote for the SNP because men are more likely than women to support independence, for whatever reasons).  Amongst the factors considered by the authors was Alex Salmond's leadership. Were women "not keen", or at least less "keen" on him than men?  Here's the critical section:

“Here the SES (“Scottish Election Survey”) evidence comes from a series of leadership ratings on an 11-point like-dislike scale. The mean male rating of Salmond was around half a point higher than the mean female rating, a difference which appears more substantial in the light of the general tendency for women to report more positive evaluations. Salmond was the only politician included in the survey to elicit significantly higher ratings from male respondents. The upshot is that, where leader evaluations are controlled, the net gender gap narrows by around one-third. Two points are worth noting about this. Firstly while females were less positive than males about the SNP leader, they nonetheless rated him more highly in absolute terms than any of the other politicians. The implication is that, insofar as leadership can be account for the gender gap in SNP voting, this is because Salmond won support from men rather than losing it among women. Second, leadership evaluations are likely to be causally posterior to some of the factors already considered. For example, it could be that males preferred Alex Salmond because he led a party to which they were already particularly favourably disposed, perhaps because they share the SNP’s preference for independence. In that case, differences in leadership evaluations are a by-product and not a cause of the gender gap under study here.” [Johns, Bennie and Mitchell 2012, 588]

Quite coincidentally, this tallies rather neatly with the idea of an "enthusiasm gap" captured in the Ipsos-MORI polling on Salmond we were looking at last week, and gives the lie to the Economist's rather sketchy, rather crude assessment of the political sensibilities of female Scots. What is left unanswered, however, is why the devil women remain more reticent about independence than men.  The authors admit they don't know.  Neither do I.

If Johns, Bennie and Mitchell's thesis is correct, however, and the gender gap in SNP support in the 2007 election is attributable to a gender gap in support for independence, the changes in the Nationalists' electoral fortunes between 2011 and 2007 may repay close study for YesScotland.  After all, during this period of time, the party's constitutional policies were basically unaltered.  If the female vote faltered for the SNP in 2007, and more or less caught up with men in 2011, something must have changed. It may well be, however, that the two elections were simply fought in different terms, concerned with different priorities, and women's disagreement with independence was mostly just de-emphasised rather than altered or eliminated as a factor weighing against supporting the Nationalists between their tentative first and thumping second victories.

If something along these lines is the case, and the gist of the Jones, Bennie and Mitchell thesis holds for 2011 as in 2007, the SNP managed strongly to attract women's votes despite their attitudes to independence in the last election. In 2014, YesScotland faces a far more daunting task: to attract women to independence, despite independence. No pressure.

Study reveals average SNP member is "stunted Jacobite bogle"

There's a splash in this morning's edition of the Scotland on Sunday, reporting findings from research conducted by Professor James Mitchell and Dr Lynn Bennie, on the demographics of the SNP membership.  Including topline findings on attitude to the death penalty, NATO and homosexuality, the report dawdles behind this cutting from Saturday's Kinlochbervie Chronicle. It transpires that Scotland is awash with researchers, scrutinising the composition of the party of government, its peccadilloes and preferences. Ecclefechan reports...

Study reveals average SNP member is "stunted Jacobite bogle"
Ecclefechan Mackay (MA), Political Correspondent

He is four foot three inches tall, is devoted to the House of Stuart, and whenever anyone invites him to remove his bobble hat during Scotland's only warm summer day, he takes it as a personal insult – say hello to the Scottish National Party’s everyman. The comprehensive dissection of the SNP’s membership in a new academic study reveals for the first time the political, ideological, and personal make-up of the thousands of low-slung atavistic hobgoblins who have helped the party to power at Holyrood.

The study, conducted by Dr William Augustus of Cumberland University, involved distracting SNP members with a "shiny groat" while persecuting them with a series of increasingly personal questions, from their attitudes towards a range of aberrant sexual practises to the precise length of their inseams. 

The questionnaire was carried out between February 1707 and March 2012. It shows that nearly a quarter of members (5 per cent) had joined since 1745. Despite expectations of a young and vital movement, the shock study reveals that 88.2 per cent of the six people who responded to the study were male, while the average year of birth came out at 1724, two key conclusions the book’s author had not anticipated. To the dismay of the party leadership, the study also discovered that retired Skye boatswain, Flora MacDonald, 290, remains the SNP's only paid-up female member to date. 

Controversially, the study also found that only 19.7% agree with an independent Scotland retaining the Hanoverian succession. The membership's continuing commitment to the rightful sovereignty of the King over the Water will be a disappointment for Alex Salmond, who is perceived to have moved the party in a pro-Hanovarian direction. 

Interpreted as an attempt to distance himself from the effete scions of the House of Stuart, the First Minister was widely photographed widely last year, consuming a coiled, peppery sausage during an unofficial visit to Cumbria. Salmond also sought to use his Hugo Young lecture last month to emphasise what one government spokesman described as Salmond's "Hanovarophile passions". Interrupting his keynote address after just ten minutes, the First Minister produced a portrait of Queen Anne, and proceeded to oggle her suety phizog in lascivious silence for a flattering five minutes. The specially-invited audience of Guardian grandees variously described the display as "impressive" and reassuring", with Guardian editor, Adam Humbugbridger, assessing Salmond's performance as "breathtaking", adding "he really is the foremost pro-Hanovarian politician in Britain today".

Asked about their preferred candidate for the Presidency of an independent Scotland, 98.8 per cent of SNP members supported Corrie-bagging rambler Tom Weir, while fifty one per cent of party activists identified their favourite flavour of nun as "carmelised". Dr Augustus' survey also shows that two thirds of members (45 per cent) go border reaving at least once a year, donating on average two head of black cattle to head office annually.

Contacted last night, a Scottish Conservative Party spokesman said "Nobody will be surprised by these findings. Anyone who has seen an SNP conference on the telly knows that the party consists entirely of diminutive wool-clad kobolds."

Scottish N(/n)ationalism & class-based politics...

A peaty crony recently sent me an account of a conversation overheard in a bar in the Southside of Glasgow.  The characters are a group of men in middle-to-late middle age. They are smartly dressed, prosperous, with a taste for the finer things in life. Natty watches hang from their joints and swanky shoes are an immediate concern. Sipping a second or third drink, they pass around plates of salade niçoise and moules marinières, discuss the architecture of British cathedrals - when their discussion noisily turns to the working classes. Despite their snobberies and their habits of consumption, none of the speakers show any remote sense of restraint discussing this topic. Their discussion isn't abashed with bourgeois fumblings and they do not envisage working class fellow-citizens as external observers might.  Despite their objective circumstances, and tastes, and manners, and expenditures - each of these men feels themselves to be, at bottom, working class characters.

During May's Holyrood election campaign, I analysed the SNP's party political broadcast with reference to this curious (and often Labour-voting) archetype, which I contended was very accurately depicted by the broadcast's skeptical protagonist, played by Jimmy Chisholm. A number of you found the lineaments of this character recognisable. Last week, I noted but didn't really delve into the class-based  data, generated by Professor James Mitchell et al in the Scottish Election Study 2011. One of the profoundly interesting aspects of the data as generated - positively inviting speculation - is its inclusion of subjective class-identifiers and a contrasting "objective" class identifier, which is to say, a consistent standard applied across the Study sample, based on the occupation of the head of household. These numbers are preliminary, borrowed from slides in which the researchers involved in the Study have presented their findings. Some important points of detail are absent - but this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed social scientific labour, so I don't have to feel too embarrassed about speculation and best-guesses. 

Firstly, the middle classes. I have written before about some of the curiosities which surround the Scotch bourgeois. They are often conceived as Anglicised - and by dint of that, of attenuated Scottishness - the burdens of national representation being devolved onto the working classes, often dominated by urban, west coast sounds and images. Although I have not enlarged on the proposition before here, one of the most irritating manifestations of this tendency is Scottish theatre. All too often, I have sat in middle class audiences, watching middle class actors perform material composed by middle class authors - cheerfully playing out yet another plucky-working-class-touchstone-of-authenticity type tale, without any sense of embarrassment. It is a complex issue, which I'm conscious that I'm only touching on here. I am certainly not attempting to make the case for banishing such material for our stages, nor indeed denying that such parliamo Glasgow offerings are without their charms. It is just the almost hegemonic status of such dramatic material and the delusions it fosters that I find problematic.  The crucial point is the tied presence and absence of the Scottish bourgeoisie. To paraphase (I think) Christopher Whyte or Cairns Craig, it conspires at its own invisibility.

There is also a curious gendered aspect of this. All credit to Gerry Hassan, one of the few folk in our public life to try to talk about Scottish masculinities. Gerry has contended that men are everywhere and nowhere - and that too often, we lack a vocabulary, range of images and narratives about what it means to be a Scottish man.  The same point can be made, forcibly, about Scottish bourgeois masculinities, which are doubly silenced, both on the gendered and classed register. I've made the point previously, in a closer look at some elements of the small body of gender research we have, which engages with Scotland. As some of you may know, for the time being, I live in Oxford. I am always surprised when folk tell me that the town is "very English", struck by the contrast with Edinburgh. Both places are strongly associated with their respective institutions of learning, representations of them overwhelmingly defined by their bourgeois citizens (in the case of the latter, prompting Irvine Welsh's strong dislocating reaction, in Trainspotting) . In English terms, Oxford is also very much part of the South - which are least suggests questions about who dominates representations of Englishness, who can claim to encapsulate its authentic qualities? While Oxford is able to assume such a national mantle without much difficulty, Edinburgh continues to be problematic. Pleasingly paradoxically, the Scottishness of the Scots capital is at best suspect - and has been for some time.  This is just a hastily composed gallimaufry - but I think begins to suggest some of the interest of thinking in a more nuanced way about the commonplace understandings of social class - and what is inexpressible or difficult to express, expelled from our public discourses by embarrassment or long neglect.

While the terse quantitative data of the Scottish Election Survey has limited explanatory potential in such a complex field - its findings are not without their impressionistic interest. Firstly, look at the data on subjective identification as middle class....

Respondents subjectively identifying as middle class...

• SNP ~ 37%
• Labour ~ 16%
• Tories ~ 22%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 9%
• Others ~ 8%

And according to social grading's objective criteria...

AB voters (upper middle & middle classes)...

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 5%
• Greens ~ 8%
• Others ~ 7%

And...

C1 voters (lower middle classes)

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 17%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 6%
• Others ~ 3%

Professor Mitchell's slides do not record the brute number of people we are talking about here - so it is impossible at this point to see whether subjective identifications as middle class are significantly smaller than those identified as such by "objective" social grading criteria. I suspect so. It is the discrepancies which strike me as particularly interesting. For example, amongst AB and C1 respondents, the Conservative vote is 14% and 17% respectively - but amongst those who subjectively identify as middle class, it runs between 5% and 8% higher at 22%. Although it would be important to look at how many folk we are actually talking about - these findings might suggest an interesting correlation between self-identifying as middle class and voting Tory. Certainly, in anecdotal form, I know a number of folk who recount the idea that certain people of their acquaintance started voting Tory, as a signifier of their conceit of themselves and place in the world. Further to the characters with which this blogpost opened, it is equally interesting to note that Labour support ran at 25% amongst AB and C1 voters - but only 16% of those subjectively identifying as bourgeois voted Labour. Again, we have to be careful here*. The SES data, as presently presented, doesn't allow us easily to compare across subjective and objective categories. We don't know the actual numbers of respondents in each group, so at the moment, we cannot tell for sure (but can guess) how far the objective and subjective class categories overlap. However, the fact that there is a 9% difference between objective classification as middle class, and subjective identification as middle class amongst Labour voters, might well suggest that a significant number of them either believe themselves to be working class, or abstain from a class-based analysis altogether. We'd have to see the figures and not just the percentages, to be sure. As those who read my post the other day will have seen, the working class data (subjective and objective) breaks down as follows...

Respondents subjectively identifying as working class...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 33%
• Tories ~ 7%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 3%
• Others ~ 6%

C2DE voters (working classes)...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 28%
• Tories ~ 9%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

Again, we don't have numbers of respondents - only percentages - but a few interesting points can be picked up. Firstly, while the SNP vote is stable across subjective and objective categories - the Labour vote decreases by a not insignificant 5% when one moves into the objective register. Bluntly, 5% of the Labour vote conceives of itself as working class, but isn't according to occupational criteria. Interestingly, despite protestations to the contrary, the Greenies are attracting only tiny percentages amongst working class respondents, whether subjectively or objectively defined.  Finally, and in some respects, perhaps most interestingly, are the results under the third subjective class category - those who do not identify with any class at all. The data is striking:

Respondents subjectively identifying as having no class...

• SNP ~ 53%
• Labour ~ 17%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

A truly walloping lead for the Nationalists, 36% ahead of their nearest Labour rivals. There is a fascinating ideological aspect to this. One aspect of Scottish Nationalism - and indeed nationalism as such - which has historically concerned (some) socialists and communists, is its capacity to leech energy from the class struggle. In place of a united working class, contending against the rapacious bourgeoisie, you have nationalist division between English and Welsh and Scottish workers, whose energies are dispersed rather than united by a nationalist politics. I don't share the view - but I know a number of folk who would still hold to and proselytise for it. Unlike the social grading data and the subjective identifiers, we are unable at this point to set subjectivity beside objective criteria, and see how else we might categorise these "classless" respondent, and where in the brute boxes of ABC1 and C2DE most of them might fit - or how they are distributed across social grades. This is a pity, but it does pose a few pungent questions. First and foremost, what are the characteristics of these "classless voters"? Given how problematic middle-class identities can be in Scotland - indeed as I remember, David McCrone once suggested that there is a strong version of Scottish nationalism, which sees class as a wholly alien and English fixation - what does the SNP's majority amongst respondents of this character suggest about N(/n)ationalism's appeal?

Answers and speculation on a postcard, please...

*I'm obliged to James Mackenzie for pointing this out.

Scottish N(/n)ationalism & class-based politics...

A peaty crony recently sent me an account of a conversation overheard in a bar in the Southside of Glasgow.  The characters are a group of men in middle-to-late middle age. They are smartly dressed, prosperous, with a taste for the finer things in life. Natty watches hang from their joints and swanky shoes are an immediate concern. Sipping a second or third drink, they pass around plates of salade niçoise and moules marinières, discuss the architecture of British cathedrals - when their discussion noisily turns to the working classes. Despite their snobberies and their habits of consumption, none of the speakers show any remote sense of restraint discussing this topic. Their discussion isn't abashed with bourgeois fumblings and they do not envisage working class fellow-citizens as external observers might.  Despite their objective circumstances, and tastes, and manners, and expenditures - each of these men feels themselves to be, at bottom, working class characters.

During May's Holyrood election campaign, I analysed the SNP's party political broadcast with reference to this curious (and often Labour-voting) archetype, which I contended was very accurately depicted by the broadcast's skeptical protagonist, played by Jimmy Chisholm. A number of you found the lineaments of this character recognisable. Last week, I noted but didn't really delve into the class-based  data, generated by Professor James Mitchell et al in the Scottish Election Study 2011. One of the profoundly interesting aspects of the data as generated - positively inviting speculation - is its inclusion of subjective class-identifiers and a contrasting "objective" class identifier, which is to say, a consistent standard applied across the Study sample, based on the occupation of the head of household. These numbers are preliminary, borrowed from slides in which the researchers involved in the Study have presented their findings. Some important points of detail are absent - but this is a blog, not a peer-reviewed social scientific labour, so I don't have to feel too embarrassed about speculation and best-guesses. 

Firstly, the middle classes. I have written before about some of the curiosities which surround the Scotch bourgeois. They are often conceived as Anglicised - and by dint of that, of attenuated Scottishness - the burdens of national representation being devolved onto the working classes, often dominated by urban, west coast sounds and images. Although I have not enlarged on the proposition before here, one of the most irritating manifestations of this tendency is Scottish theatre. All too often, I have sat in middle class audiences, watching middle class actors perform material composed by middle class authors - cheerfully playing out yet another plucky-working-class-touchstone-of-authenticity type tale, without any sense of embarrassment. It is a complex issue, which I'm conscious that I'm only touching on here. I am certainly not attempting to make the case for banishing such material for our stages, nor indeed denying that such parliamo Glasgow offerings are without their charms. It is just the almost hegemonic status of such dramatic material and the delusions it fosters that I find problematic.  The crucial point is the tied presence and absence of the Scottish bourgeoisie. To paraphase (I think) Christopher Whyte or Cairns Craig, it conspires at its own invisibility.

There is also a curious gendered aspect of this. All credit to Gerry Hassan, one of the few folk in our public life to try to talk about Scottish masculinities. Gerry has contended that men are everywhere and nowhere - and that too often, we lack a vocabulary, range of images and narratives about what it means to be a Scottish man.  The same point can be made, forcibly, about Scottish bourgeois masculinities, which are doubly silenced, both on the gendered and classed register. I've made the point previously, in a closer look at some elements of the small body of gender research we have, which engages with Scotland. As some of you may know, for the time being, I live in Oxford. I am always surprised when folk tell me that the town is "very English", struck by the contrast with Edinburgh. Both places are strongly associated with their respective institutions of learning, representations of them overwhelmingly defined by their bourgeois citizens (in the case of the latter, prompting Irvine Welsh's strong dislocating reaction, in Trainspotting) . In English terms, Oxford is also very much part of the South - which are least suggests questions about who dominates representations of Englishness, who can claim to encapsulate its authentic qualities? While Oxford is able to assume such a national mantle without much difficulty, Edinburgh continues to be problematic. Pleasingly paradoxically, the Scottishness of the Scots capital is at best suspect - and has been for some time.  This is just a hastily composed gallimaufry - but I think begins to suggest some of the interest of thinking in a more nuanced way about the commonplace understandings of social class - and what is inexpressible or difficult to express, expelled from our public discourses by embarrassment or long neglect.

While the terse quantitative data of the Scottish Election Survey has limited explanatory potential in such a complex field - its findings are not without their impressionistic interest. Firstly, look at the data on subjective identification as middle class....

Respondents subjectively identifying as middle class...

• SNP ~ 37%
• Labour ~ 16%
• Tories ~ 22%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 9%
• Others ~ 8%

And according to social grading's objective criteria...

AB voters (upper middle & middle classes)...

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 5%
• Greens ~ 8%
• Others ~ 7%

And...

C1 voters (lower middle classes)

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 17%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 6%
• Others ~ 3%

Professor Mitchell's slides do not record the brute number of people we are talking about here - so it is impossible at this point to see whether subjective identifications as middle class are significantly smaller than those identified as such by "objective" social grading criteria. I suspect so. It is the discrepancies which strike me as particularly interesting. For example, amongst AB and C1 respondents, the Conservative vote is 14% and 17% respectively - but amongst those who subjectively identify as middle class, it runs between 5% and 8% higher at 22%. Although it would be important to look at how many folk we are actually talking about - these findings might suggest an interesting correlation between self-identifying as middle class and voting Tory. Certainly, in anecdotal form, I know a number of folk who recount the idea that certain people of their acquaintance started voting Tory, as a signifier of their conceit of themselves and place in the world. Further to the characters with which this blogpost opened, it is equally interesting to note that Labour support ran at 25% amongst AB and C1 voters - but only 16% of those subjectively identifying as bourgeois voted Labour. Again, we have to be careful here*. The SES data, as presently presented, doesn't allow us easily to compare across subjective and objective categories. We don't know the actual numbers of respondents in each group, so at the moment, we cannot tell for sure (but can guess) how far the objective and subjective class categories overlap. However, the fact that there is a 9% difference between objective classification as middle class, and subjective identification as middle class amongst Labour voters, might well suggest that a significant number of them either believe themselves to be working class, or abstain from a class-based analysis altogether. We'd have to see the figures and not just the percentages, to be sure. As those who read my post the other day will have seen, the working class data (subjective and objective) breaks down as follows...

Respondents subjectively identifying as working class...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 33%
• Tories ~ 7%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 3%
• Others ~ 6%

C2DE voters (working classes)...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 28%
• Tories ~ 9%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

Again, we don't have numbers of respondents - only percentages - but a few interesting points can be picked up. Firstly, while the SNP vote is stable across subjective and objective categories - the Labour vote decreases by a not insignificant 5% when one moves into the objective register. Bluntly, 5% of the Labour vote conceives of itself as working class, but isn't according to occupational criteria. Interestingly, despite protestations to the contrary, the Greenies are attracting only tiny percentages amongst working class respondents, whether subjectively or objectively defined.  Finally, and in some respects, perhaps most interestingly, are the results under the third subjective class category - those who do not identify with any class at all. The data is striking:

Respondents subjectively identifying as having no class...

• SNP ~ 53%
• Labour ~ 17%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

A truly walloping lead for the Nationalists, 36% ahead of their nearest Labour rivals. There is a fascinating ideological aspect to this. One aspect of Scottish Nationalism - and indeed nationalism as such - which has historically concerned (some) socialists and communists, is its capacity to leech energy from the class struggle. In place of a united working class, contending against the rapacious bourgeoisie, you have nationalist division between English and Welsh and Scottish workers, whose energies are dispersed rather than united by a nationalist politics. I don't share the view - but I know a number of folk who would still hold to and proselytise for it. Unlike the social grading data and the subjective identifiers, we are unable at this point to set subjectivity beside objective criteria, and see how else we might categorise these "classless" respondent, and where in the brute boxes of ABC1 and C2DE most of them might fit - or how they are distributed across social grades. This is a pity, but it does pose a few pungent questions. First and foremost, what are the characteristics of these "classless voters"? Given how problematic middle-class identities can be in Scotland - indeed as I remember, David McCrone once suggested that there is a strong version of Scottish nationalism, which sees class as a wholly alien and English fixation - what does the SNP's majority amongst respondents of this character suggest about N(/n)ationalism's appeal?

Answers and speculation on a postcard, please...

*I'm obliged to James Mackenzie for pointing this out.

Those Scottish Election Study headlines...

My thanks to the helpful Dr Christopher Carman for alerting me to the fact that some initial slides from the Scottish Election Study of 2011 have now been published.  Many of you will have seen the edition of BBC Newsnicht this week, which enjoyed an early sight of the Study's preliminary findings about May's Holyrood election. The research team of political scientists, based at the University of Strathclyde, describe their methodology thus:

"In 2011, the Scottish Election Study took the form of a two-wave internet panel survey, with data collection undertaken by YouGov. The aim of the study is to explain the decisions of Scottish voters on 5 May, both whether and for which party they voted. As well as voting behaviour, the survey questionnaires cover the following topics: attitudes to parties and leaders; issue opinions and evaluations; national identity; constitutional preferences; multilevel party identification; preferences for political compromise; socio-demographic characteristics. In addition to the pre/post-election panel, the 2011 SES also reinterviewed respondents to the 2007 Scottish Election Study."

Data collection took place in two waves, one before and one after election day. The first engaged with 2,046 respondents, with fieldwork being conducted in late April. The second wave occurred later in May, with 1,760 respondents. While analysis of the data is still ongoing, the research team have now made three sets of slides available online, laying out preliminary findings.

The first, from Dr Carman's presentation from a seminar at the University of Strathclyde held this week, looks at issues of turnout; the use of two ballot papers for constituency and regional votes in Holyrood 2011, and its comprehensibility; the abortive AV referendum and respondents understanding of the AV system - and finally, on the phenomenon of "multi-level party support" in Holyrood and Westminster, or to borrow a phrase from John McTernan, Scotland's "promiscuous", Bobbing John electorate.

Secondly, we have the University of Essex's Dr Rob Johns, who asks Why does ‘performance politics’ win Scottish elections? Johns submits that there are four key aspects of context: 1. The Scottish Parliament matters; 2. Class and party dealignment; 3. Ideological convergence and 4. Reshaping of the constitutional issue. The first limb focusses on how respondents envisage key policy areas, including law and order, health - and so on. Do they conceive of outcomes in these policy areas as being primarily due to the UK or the Scottish Government? Secondly, Johns looks at responses to the question “Do you usually think of yourself as being a supporter of one particular party?” While 44% of respondents said ‘no’, the study revealed that many said ‘yes’ then abstained or defected in the most recent Holyrood election. The third limb examines perceptions of "ideological convergence" between political parties. The fourth plucks out the issue of the constitution.“How do you think the return of an SNP minority government would affect the likelihood of independence?”, asked the research team. According to 1,784 respondents to the Study the return of an SNP minority administration would make independence...

• Much more likely ~ 7% 
• Bit more likely ~ 29%
• No difference ~ 42% 
• Bit less likely ~ 13% 
• Much less likely ~ 9%

Johns then turns to look at credit and blame, party image - capable of strong government, united, in touch with ordinary people, keeps promises - followed by a comparative analysis of leader-party popularities. All interesting and very much worth a look.

Lastly, at least for now, we have Professor James Mitchell's slides, which deal with a couple of issues of particular interest to me - support for party by gender, and by social grading. In the interests of comparative brevity, I'll tease out the Study's findings on these two issues - and simply note the other findings, without much getting into them.  Those of you who stayed with me during the Holyrood campaign may remember my series of posts, looking at the disaggregated data in YouGov's pre-election polling, focussing throughout on gender and class. One striking feature of this series of polls was the thumping leads the SNP were recording amongst C2DE voters - those assessed to be working class based on the occupational criteria. The polls also tended to show a narrowing "gender gap" in the SNP support, with increasing percentages of women, minded to support the Nationalists. My interest in that subject goes back some time, with my first dedicated post on the topic dating from August 2010, filling out some of the context informing a column by former Salmond special advisor Jennifer Dempsie in the Scotland on Sunday, arguing that "winning over female voters" was "crucial to SNP ambitions". Unfortunately, the wider media didn't really pick up on these interesting trends in the course of the campaign.  If they had done so, the Study's conclusions would be much less surprising, extensively anticipated as they were.

Significantly, Professor Mitchell's study confirms YouGov's pre-election polling which suggested a narrowing gender gap and a significant lead amongst working class voters. According to the survey data collected by the Study, their respondents voted as follows, by gender (N.B. Mitchell is referring us to the Study data on regional voting in the 2011 Holyrood election).

Male respondents (SES)...

• SNP ~ 46%
• Labour ~ 24%
• Tories ~ 12%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 6%
• Others ~ 8%

And women...

Female respondents (SES)...

• SNP ~ 43%
• Labour ~ 29%
• Tories ~ 12%
• Liberals ~ 6%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 6%

On social class, the Study asked about (a) subjective social class, namely how respondents self-identify and (b) objective social class, based on the familiar ABC1/C2DE categorisations I've discussed previously.  Firstly, the Scottish Election Study's working class data, subjectively then objectively defined:

Respondents subjectively identifying as working class...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 33%
• Tories ~ 7%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 3%
• Others ~ 6%

C2DE voters (working classes)...

• SNP ~ 47%
• Labour ~ 28%
• Tories ~ 9%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

In brief, amongst those subjectively identifying as working class in the Election Survey, the SNP beat Labour by 14%. According to social grading's objective criteria, the gap was even wider - with Labour lagging 19% behind the SNP.  Interestingly, this outcome echoes (and amplifies) the results of YouGov's pre-election polling, which recorded an SNP lead over Labour amongst C2DE voters of a magnitude varying from 4% to 15% in the constituency vote and -1% to 10% in the regional vote. Interestingly at the beginning of the campaign, the polls suggested that ABC1 voters remained to be convinced by the Nationalists, holding on the Labour allegiances more tenaciously than their C2DE fellow citizens. According to Mitchell's data, bourgeois participants in the Survey reported the following voting behaviour, with the same subjective then objective analysis...

Respondents subjectively identifying as middle class...

• SNP ~ 37%
• Labour ~ 16%
• Tories ~ 22%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 9%
• Others ~ 8%

And according to social grading's objective criteria...

AB voters (upper middle & middle classes)...

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 5%
• Greens ~ 8%
• Others ~ 7%

And...

C1 voters (lower middle classes)

• SNP ~ 41%
• Labour ~ 25%
• Tories ~ 17%
• Liberals ~ 8%
• Greens ~ 6%
• Others ~ 3%

The rather bizarre looking results of the subjective social class findings - 22% of which is Tory - can probably be explained by factoring in a third option given to respondents - to subjectively identify with no social class at all.  Amongst those respondents, the results were striking - and as follows.

Respondents subjectively identifying as having no class...

• SNP ~ 53%
• Labour ~ 17%
• Tories ~ 14%
• Liberals ~ 4%
• Greens ~ 4%
• Others ~ 8%

Professor Mitchell's slides also lays out the voting data according to national identity - with an interesting and sensitive range of options being afforded to those questioned, allowing those answering to give priority to British or Scottish identities, declare an equivalence between them, or to deny either. The Professor also sets down voting by religious affiliation, albeit with a fairly limited range of categories. Three in fact: no religion; Church of Scotland or Catholic. The data on these issues can be found on his ninth slide. No doubt the Study will generate plenty of other eccentric pieces of data to keep amateur psephologists in the public cheered and distracted from their other labours, for some time to come.

"Winning over female voters crucial to SNP ambitions...."

Hamlet, Hamlet, loved his mammy

Hamlet, Hamlet, acting bammy...

One of the perils of being suspected of being a calculating so-and-so is that the suspicious section of your audience has its eyes and ears always upon you, lending even your smallest gesture a sly, premeditated significance. Many folk have interpreted Alex Salmond's recent Desert Island Discs appearance and music selections in this way. Not, as the venerable format suggests, a chance for tight-buttoned public figures to be disclosing and personable, but another way for the strategising political creature to calculate what sort of "inner life" and species of relaxed candour they'd like listeners to imagine they have. Only a rather elementary liar would imagine only two faces are required, mask and phizog. The real past masters recognise that at least three personas are necessary, and there is no more effective way of hoodwinking the credulous than by giving them the impression they've "seen through" your front and have discovered, by simple operation of their own wit and clarity, some bashfully concealed real quality of your character. In most cases, when the vanity which  accompanies apparently clear-eyed perception vies with suspicion, the latter rarely triumphs. 

If you are of a doubt filled disposition, you might think that it was hardly coincidental that Salmond used his radio spot to harp on the string of the debts of affection and influence owed to his mammy,  rewarded with references to the importance of a female influence in his life. This is by no means to take cynicism too far and to imply that he was fibbing. Rather, we might see it as a significant example of sincerity and self interest happily coinciding.  Yesterday's Holyrood poll furnishes us with another, electorally extremely concerning example of the SNP's gender gap, which is by now well-kent phenomenon on this blog. In a Scotsman column published last August, former Salmond aide Jennifer Dempsie contended that "Winning over female voters crucial to SNP ambitions", continuing:

"... gender balance is taken seriously within the SNP leadership. Efforts have been made to soften the party's image. During the 2007 election a major push was made in education and health policy to attract the female vote. However if real gains are to be made in this department a concentrated campaign is needed and the adoption of a more women-friendly approach to campaigning."

If she is correct and the late polling even broadly captures the underlying quality of public opinion, we're in for a drubbing unless real progress is made and made swiftly.  The latest data shows the SNP some 18% behind Labour amongst female respondents in the constituency and 29% behind amongst those women who identify as "committed voters". On the regional list, we are lagging behind Labour to the tune of 15% amongst women, rising to a 24% gap amongst those women voters, committed to exercising their franchise. In the last Ipsos MORI poll which I covered in any detail, published at the end of last November, the SNP were lagging behind Labour in female support to the tune of 18% on the constituency ballot and a significantly smaller 3% on the list. An earlier YouGov poll from August, the "gap" between the SNP and Labour amounting to 6% in constituencies, while the party actually recorded a lead of 1% over Labour amongst women on the list. The data suggests that the gap is shifting and implies something of the complexity of the social phenomenon only partially pinned down by crude quantitative categories. It also suggests that the results from recent polling  diagnose the widest end of any gender gap. Few I think, would seriously suggest that the gap is merely phantasmal, a pollster's spectre. 

 

In a paper by James Mitchell, Robert Johns and Lynn Bennie, "Gendered Nationalism: Women and the SNP" (2009), they wrote:

"... there has been little research aimed at explaining this gender gap. One possible explanation lies in national identity, which as already indicated is a key mobiliser in support for the SNP. It might be that Scottish national identity has greater appeal for males, not least because of its associations with sport (football and rugby, for example). The evidence here contradicts that possibility. If anything, men’s identities are more British than are those of women, although the differences are small (and only marginally statistically significant). The SNP’s particular appeal to men – or problems in attracting support from women – must have some other basis."

The main focus of the rest of this piece, quite understandably, was on the significant quantity of data unearthed in the course of their ESRC funded project on the SNP party membership.  They need no lectures from me on how generalising from the party membership to the general voting population is problematic. Nevertheless, they tentatively suggest that there may be some relationship between differentially gendered attitude towards the constitution and support for the SNP. Entangled issues of (a) support for nationalism and (b) support for Nationalists. As we are often reminded, support for the SNP is oft-times greater than support for independence, encompassing a number of folk who may be undecided about, or actively hostile to, the prospect of Scottish independence. By focussing on independence by referendum, the party has actively fostered the notion that a vote for the SNP is not a vote for independence per se (at most it is a vote for a vote on independence). Independence being a "detachable issue", Unionists can vote SNP with consciences clear. Mitchell et. al and others hypothesise that women may not vote SNP because of their more conservative constitutional attitudes. For my own part, I'd rather focus the issue in a different way, and instead of rooting the problem of lower female support in women, focus on how the party needs to change its approach, whether substantially or in terms of communication.

Given the urgency of the issue and the necessity to think through these issues - now and in the longer term - I thought it might be helpful to bring together recent discussions of the issue across the blogs and the various other explanations and solutions people have adduced to the N(/n)ationalist problem. Inspired by Dempsie's piece, I set down my initial thoughts in a post on the SNP and its gender voting gap.

Spectator blogger Alex Massie rooted the problem more specifically in the Maximum Eck's personality, styling it Alex Salmond's women problem and suggesting that women may find his style alienating.

Analysis aided by the virtue of being a lassie herself, La Corbie offered her burdz eye view on The SNP's problem with wimmin, earlier writing about the Scottish parliamentary representation of women in Work, Work, Work.

Bella Caledonia hosted an interest range of authoresses who particularly focussed on the constitutional rather than the partisan issue of SNP strategy. Given the (albeit complex) connection between attitudes to the constitution and attitudes to the SNP, these articles contain much that is relevant and worthy of consideration. Caitlin O'Hara was Bella's first Independent Woman, while Lena the Hyena was their second.  Joan McAlpine echoed the title of her blog in Go Lassies Go. It wasn't the wild mountain thyme she was after, but some of the whys and wherefores on Scottish women's attitudes towards the prospect of an independent Scotland and more concretely, towards the SNP .

Scotland Deformed? asks Kirsten Stirling. Analysing the work of Alasdair Gray, she concludes:

"In Poor Things Gray takes a tradition of seeing Scotland as essentially divided and transforms its allegorical potential into something still monstrous yet potentially positive, reappropriating the celebratory approach to the Caledonian antisyzygy found in Smith and MacDiarmid. The deformed body of Bella Caledonia need not be read negatively. Gray highlights the discourses of monstrosity in the cultural and literary construction of Scotland and proposes an allegorical body in which different constructions of Scotland can co-exist. He opens the door to new narratives of Scotland in which both Scotland and women can be theorised without being critically deformed in the process."

Finally, I tried to approach the issue from the side of Scottish masculinities, and their implications for an analysis of Scottish women's feelings and attitudes, in Will you go laddie go?