Political Polarisation in Scotland: Candidates and Voters Compared, 1999-2017

What are the drivers of political polarisation? The Scottish case provides an intriguing story of unexpected polarisation on regional autonomy and independence. The 1997 Scottish devolution referendum, granting Scotland its own parliament, was associated with expectations of ‘settling’ the Scottish issue. Also, the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence was intended by the UK government to remove the topic from the political agenda. In both cases, the expectation that referenda would remove a divisive issue appear to have been disappointed. Devolution did not stop the rise of the independence movement, and granting Scotland a referendum on independence appears to have created more mobilisation and more division rather than settling the issue and removing it from party competition. This paper will analyse the drivers of polarisation on devolution and independence in Scotland. It makes use of the rich data available to track back to 1999 – not only public opinion, but also the attitudes of the Scottish political class. Our main data base are CCS inspired surveys of candidates in local council elections (2007, 2012 and 2017), Scottish Parliament elections (2007, 2011 and 2016), and UK General Elections (2010, 2015 and 2017), supplemented by an earlier candidate survey at local and national level from 1999. We can track back views of candidates and their changes, and compare their attitudes with those of voters based on Scottish and UK election studies and other public attitude data in order to come to a comprehensive longitudinal analysis of the interaction between candidate and public attitudes.