UKIP are on a roll in Wales. That’s what the latest YouGov poll for ITV predicts. Their success bites into the Tory vote reducing them to seven Assembly Members, half the number they have now.
The poll is also good news for Labour they regain their dominance of the Welsh political scene.
In Westminster elections Labour are up 15% from their general election results, according to the ITV’s poll they get 51%.
But for European elections they go up by an astonishing 24%. Meaning they would get 3 out of the 4 Welsh European seats with the Tories getting the remaining one.
The poll data also show’s Labour gaining a majority over all other parties in the Assembly. All be it by one vote, but enough to prevent them having to accommodate the other parties to get their budgets through. This year they had to do a deal with Plaid, last year it was the Liberal Democrats.
Labour gain 4% in the constituency section compared with 2011 but do loose out on the regional vote. In the regional list they are down by 11%. Unusually the pattern for regional votes differ from that of the constituencies.
Despite Plaid being down 2% in the Assembly constituency section they are up 8% on the regional list. This puts them comfortably back as the second party in the Assembly and the title of being the official opposition.
But there is a sting in the tail for them. Leanne Wood having decided to give her place up on the regional list to fight a constituency would on this poll data be out on her ear. This would trigger a leadership election in Plaid’s ranks, as their rules say that the leader has to come from the ranks of Assembly Members.
Whichever way you look at it, its the Conservatives that have most to worry about in the poll. They loose their status of being official opposition in the Assembly.
According to the figures they would be down to 7 members, just 2 more than UKIP who would make a breakthrough to the Assembly with 5 members, one more than the Liberal Democrats who would go down 1 to having 4 AMs.
The new chamber of the Assembly would look very different to the current one. Labour would have the majority with 31. Plaid Cymru would be the Official Opposition with 13 seats. The Tories would be the third party with 7. UKIP with 5 and Liberal Democrats 4.
But there is a disappointment to all the anti european politicians. There is no appetite to leave the EU in Wales. This could raise a very interesting constitutional issue if England decided to vote to leave in such a referendum. There is also another irony in the figures. UKIP was opposed to the Welsh Assembly for a number of years, indeed they wanted it scrapped and now if the poll is right become a player in the institution they once wanted rid of. Yet, the people of Wales reject their main raison d'être by voting to stay in Europe. By gum, politics is a strange business
1007 people is not a true representation.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that there is an England, there is an England and Wales, but there isn't really 'a Wales' for any matters of import. Ah yes, agreed, education is important but it isn't very important in Wales and similarly so with healthcare.
ReplyDeleteBut returning to the matter of England and Wales, if England ever votes to leave the EU, an impossible dream, Wales will leave too. Wales does not exists other than within the English context in maters such.
I don't think Welsh polls have much of a track record, please correct me if that's not the case.
ReplyDeletePlaid could blunt that UKIP surge at the Euro elections if they only showed a touch of Euroscepticism. Guess they aren't going to though, a pity as I'm old enough to remember when they were an anti-Common Market party, seeing it - correctly in my view - as being a centralist, corporatist, potentially imperialist structure.
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