SCOTS do not become more favourable towards the Union as they mature, and older pro-UK voters are being replaced by younger nationalists, new research has found.
Mark McGeoghegan, an academic from Glasgow University, has analysed nearly a quarter of a century's worth of responses from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS) to see what effect age has on the relationship with support for Scottish independence.
In a paper published this weekend by Scotland’s respected Centre on Constitutional Change think tank, McGeoghegan posed the question.
“Is the relationship between age and support for Scottish secession a cohort effect, a lifecycle effect, or a cohort effect mediated by a lifecycle effect?” he asked.
Cohort effects refer to differences between birth cohorts that persist over time, while lifecycle effects refer to changes that occur among a birth cohort as they age.
A third type of effect, period effects, refers to events that shift every birth cohort at the same time.
“The modelling suggests that there has been a consistent cohort effect since 1999 — that is, voters in younger birth cohorts are more likely to support secession than voters in older birth cohorts, and this is a persistent finding over time,” McGeoghegan said.
He added: “It also fails to find evidence of a lifecycle effect — birth cohorts do not become less likely to support secession as they age.
“We also see period effects around the 2014 and 2016 referendums, when events reshaped Scottish politics.”
Using the SSAS data, McGeoghegan has calculated the chances of people in various cohorts supporting independence over 24 years – and has found that support for Scottish independence is growing stronger with every new generation.
He found that people born between 1979 and 1988, those now in their late 30s and early 40s, have a mean probability of supporting independence of 52%.
Meanwhile, voters who were born between 1989 and 1998 have a 60% chance of being in support of Scotland’s right to self-determination.
For those born between 1999 and 2007, the figure is even higher, 70%.
By contrast, there is a 37% mean probability that somebody from before 1958 is a Unionist.
McGeoghegan used SSAS data, which looks at underlying attitudes to independence, rather than asking the same question as the 2014 vote.
He believes this data uncovers deeper, longer trends and, for now, these are upward for secession.
Although McGeoghegan warns that his findings “should not be taken as evidence that independence is inevitable”.
He added: “Public opinion is mutable, not set in stone.
“As we can see above, period effects can shift opinion across the population – they are also not necessarily predictable.”
McGeoghegan's report follows an exclusive poll for The National, which found that Scotland would vote for independence by a significant majority were a second referendum held tomorrow.
The survey, conducted by Find Out Now, found that 52% of Scots said they would vote Yes to leave the Union in a rerun of the 2014 vote, an 11-point lead over the 41% of Scots who would back No.
In total, 7% of Scots said they did not know how they would vote. With these removed, 56% of Scottish voters said they would back independence against 44% who said they would vote for the Union.
