As I remarked here and elsewhere, the Scottish vote was not close. There are two main reasons for it. One is the staggeringly high welfare class in Scotland. It’s not Camden in Kilts, but it is close. The only way that block was going for independence is if it meant bigger welfare checks. The very word “independence” is frightening to the dependency class. Welfare types are not very bright, but they are clever. They know how the system works better than the foolish tax payers, busy pulling the wagon. I’m sure in the welfare underground the math of this had been worked out long ago.

Even if I’m exaggerating the size of the loafer class, there was never a compelling reason to leave. All the romantic crap about Braveheart is moving to some people, but most people want to live lives of quiet desperation. That’s the bit Thoreau never understood. Most men do not want “to live deliberately and confront the essential facts of life.” Most men like things the way they are. It’s why the Left is winning the war on civilization. Once they push through some toppling of a stone. people get used to it. Rousing the people to put the stone back is impossible.

This vote also provides a nice reminder of the dishonestly of polling. The polling companies need close races that appear to go back and forth. The press wants polls showing closes races. All of the incentives are pointing in one direction. Polling is not science. It is barely statistics. It’s how Research 2000 was able to sell fake polls to the Daily Kos so easily. The lunatics at Kos want to believe so strongly, they lost the ability to see when they were being conned.

This vote was never close. The result is pretty much what early polling suggested. The press and the polling outfits wished otherwise and the inevitable momentum slowly collapsed the polls until we had a deadlock. By the standards of modern elections, this was a blowout. For the next week, the pollsters will spin the result focusing on what changed in the final days and how the winning side won and the losing side lost. Throw in a few conspiracy theories about rigged votes and the polling gets forgotten.

Nice racket.