Hi there, my name is James Kelly, and I write the pro-independence Scot Goes Pop blog, which spends much of its time covering opinion polls.

Polls can shape much of the narrative of any election campaign, and that leaves us with a problem in Scotland because most polls are commissioned by unionist media clients. The media don't, of course, decide the results of those polls, but they do decide which issues are and aren't worth asking about, and also what emphasis each result should be given at the time of publication. It's become increasingly frequent over the last couple of years, for example, for the results on the standard Yes/No question about Scottish independence to be totally buried in the reporting - and doubtless it's just an astounding coincidence that this has happened at precisely the moment that Yes has moved into a clear lead in the polling average.

Between 2020 and 2023, I was fortunate enough to be able to offer a corrective to this problem on my website Scot Goes Pop. Roughly every four months during that period, I was able to commission a poll from a variety of reputable polling firms affiliated to the British Polling Council, and to ask the questions that we in the independence movement wanted asked, not the ones that unionist journalists and politicians wanted asked. It wasn't easy, because polls are very expensive, but I was able to do it with your help.

Some of those polls were genuine landmarks. Remember that extraordinary period between mid-2020 and early 2021 when every single independence poll showed a Yes majority? The very first poll in that unbroken sequence was a Panelbase poll commissioned by Scot Goes Pop in June 2020. A few months later, another Scot Goes Pop-commissioned poll showed the largest Yes lead in any Panelbase poll ever. Supplementary results from the polls showed, among other things, that voters want Scotland to join the international treaty banning nuclear weapons, and think it would be appropriate to use a scheduled election to seek a mandate for independence if the option of a referendum is closed off.

I haven't commissioned a poll for three years because the fundraising efforts ran out of steam. However, if there was ever going to be a moment to have a new poll, that moment is right now - we're in the middle of a crucial election campaign, and there potentially won't be another major election for three years. I've therefore taken the bull by the horns and commissioned a new poll.

I'd like to ask for your help, not only in funding this new poll, but potentially raising enough to run another poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact. So if you have £10 or £20 to spare, this could be a really good-value-for-money, high-impact way of positively influencing the political narrative in Scotland. Many thanks in advance to anyone who chooses to contribute.