At the event in Edinburgh recently, I was asked a question about polling. The question was along the lines of: if the Scottish people had overwhelmingly voted in the June 2016 referendum to Remain in the EU (62 per cent of the 67.2 per cent of eligible voters who voted) then why should the activists seeking independence not endorse joining the EU. Apart from the obvious reasons relating to the concept ‘independence’ and wanting to avoid membership of a neoliberal cabal, I replied by noting that if we conducted a poll about whether people thought taxes funded government spending, then we would find a much larger percentage agreeing with that proposition that the proportion that voted to remain in the 2016 Referendum. I then asked the audience: Would you consider that outcome legitimate or a symptom of a lack of education? The point is obvious. Polls play on ignorance as much as anything. The question of campaigning and polls also came up during the recent Australian federal election, where despite millions being spent on targetted advertising and activism, the results turned out very different to those expected and in most cases the dollars spent were largely ineffective (although note below). Further, there is a growing number of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) groups forming around the world aiming to self-educate and push the public debate away from the mainstream economic narrative. The question that arises in each of these instances is how to actually push a new paradigm, a new way of thinking about concepts that permeate the very basis of our daily existence and have been ingrained in our perception in a particular way that this new way contests. That is no easy task. I have been doing some research and will report on the results in a series of blog posts starting today.