Psephologists forgot Scotland

Regular readers may recall that last Sunday the AudlemOnline webteam revealed which way they were voting – all four, it happened, for Remain. Despite this, to be even-handed, we were happy to publish our forecast of the Referendum result based on the calculations of the website's Psephology Department – see photo.

Their forecast result was:
53.67% to Vote nationally to Leave.
46.33% to Remain.

The result (so far) shows Leave with 51.8%.

Despite our Psephologists' forecast of a Leave win turning out to be correct, an explanation for their not getting the forecast absolutely correct, indeed they were out by almost 2%, was asked for: "We forgot Scotland!" was the immediate excuse.

How could you forget a whole nation, the rest of the webteam demanded. "It's the fault of the football" the Psephologists responded in chorus. "Over recent weeks the focus has all been on England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Even little Iceland is now front of mind. But not a mention of Scotland in recent weeks. That's why we forgot them!"

The web team thought this through. Whatever had happened to Scotland? Did it still have a football team, we wondered. They did better than England in last year's Rugby World Cup, we had to admit, indeed should have done even better but for one refereeing decision, but football, whatever has happened to the land of so many past football maestros – nobody could remember any mention of a single Scottish football success in years, possibly decades.

"Nice try – if you'll excuse the reference to Rugby – but you Psephologists guaranteed us that your forecast was cast-iron. We wouldn't have published it if we'd known you were fallible and would be out by 2%."

The result showed that while Scotland voted emphatically to Remain, their vote was even more Remain than expected.

It was at this point that AudlemOnline's editor said something that meant that even the most loyal Psephologist simply couldn't work with him any more: "You're Fired!"

And so they all were. It's a tough life being a Psephologist in Audlem.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.