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There is a way of illustrating how Brexit politics and then also Covid politics may have shifted perceptions about risk of independence among the Scottish electorate. Namely through the stark turnaround in gender balance in Referendum vote intention.
A THREAD
A THREAD
In terms of YES vote, women remained considerably less likely to support independence than men 9 (by 5-10 percentage points), until the past 12 months or so. Since then support among women has caught up with support among men.
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But add to that the NO percentages. Until 2017, women were more opposed then men. Over the past year, this has entirely turned around. In every poll since September 2019 a smaller percentage of women than men support the Union.
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Why does this tell us anything? Because we know that there are gender differences in risk-taking.
3/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232541633_Gender_Differences_in_Risk_Taking_A_Meta-Analysis
3/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232541633_Gender_Differences_in_Risk_Taking_A_Meta-Analysis
We also know that risk-tolerance correlated strongly with referendum voting intention in 2014, as did gender.
https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/sites/default/files/migrated/papers/Risk%20and%20Constitutional%20Attitudes%20Full%20Survey%2014%20Aug_0.pdf
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https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/sites/default/files/migrated/papers/Risk%20and%20Constitutional%20Attitudes%20Full%20Survey%2014%20Aug_0.pdf
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Not wanting to overstate the case, as this is entirely circumstantial, but the pattern in the first few years after the 2014 referendum fits our expectation, with men being initially almost gung-ho about independence compared to women.
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Something important has changed more recently, that has more evently distributed preferences among men and more lopsided preferences (in favour of independence) among women.
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The shifting gender gap might serve as a thermometer of risk perception about Scottish independence. More recently, Scottish independence is no longer assessed in terms of risk on its own, but against post-Brexit Britain.
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And the fact that predominantly women (the less risk tolerant gender) have recently jumped onto the independence bandwagon might just be telling us something about how much less worrying independence sounds when juxtaposed with the uncertainty of Brexit.
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A footnote: I used only Yougov polls, to remove yet more noise in the data from house effects and change in question wording that other polling institutes toyed with.
