Friday 1 December 2017

Why are the Welsh Tories not collapsing in the polls?

I imagine Professor Roger Scully over at Elections n Wales is rather annoyed with n Welsh polling

Not our of any personnel preference but for the for a  the  static state of such polls during what is a period of political turmoil.

Please visit Professor Scully  at Election s in Wales to see more of his insight.

He writes

 As per usual, our new poll examined voting intentions for both Westminster and the National Assembly. These are the voting intention figures for a UK general election that emerged (changes on the previous Barometer poll, in September, are indicated in brackets):

Labour: 47% (-3) Conservatives: 31% (-1) Plaid Cymru: 11% (+3) Liberal Democrats: 5% (+1) UKIP: 3% (no change) Others: 3% (+1)

Labour: 28 seats Conservatives: 8 seats Plaid Cymru: 4 seats

It seems extraordinary  that it a period of the Tories  looking like one of the most incompetent government  they have remained on course to not lose a single seat in Wales.

Remember when John Major went to the country in 1997after a similar period of bad headlines he lost every seat in Wales


Proffessor Scully  writes

Our new poll also asked once again about voting intentions for the National Assembly. First, here are the figures for the constituency vote (with changes since the September Barometer poll again shown in brackets):
Labour: 43% (no change) Conservatives: 26% (+1) Plaid Cymru: 19% (no change) Liberal Democrats: 5% (no change) UKIP: 4% (no change) Others: 4% (+1)

So no real change and clearly as in Westminster we cannot see a change  in Constituency seats

The figures for the regional list vote (with changes in party support since September once more shown in brackets) however seem to indicate a currious change


Labour: 38% (-2) Conservatives: 27% (+4) Plaid Cymru: 18% (-1) Liberal Democrats: 5% (no change) UKIP: 4% (-1) Others: 8% (+2)

As Professor Scully writes 


These numbers suggest (as with Westminster voting intention, but not as seen for the constituency vote), some ebbing of Labour support. They also seem to imply a significant rise in Conservative support – something not seen elsewhere in our poll. This is puzzling – but we should remember that September’s poll showed a four-point drop in Conservative support for the list vote; that may again have been a slight outlier, and our new poll may be showing things reverting to what is the current norm. There are no major changes for any other parties evident here.
Taking into account the projected constituency rand regional seats 

it gives us the following overall projected result for the National Assembly:
Labour 30 seats (27 constituency, 3 regional) Conservative 18 seats (6 constituency, 12 regional)
Plaid Cymru 10 seats (6 constituency, 4 regional) UKIP 1 seat (1 regional) Liberal Democrats 1 seat (1 constituency)

 So Wales seem to be heading for three party politics  and both the former LibDem and Ukip votes going largely to the to Tories.

It  could be the nature of their support  has always been a protest vote rather than support for any ideology and for the moment  at least these voters are going for the main parties and it seems favouring the Tories.

It is also clear that in the Assembly it is the Tories who are seen as the opposition to Labour and Plaid are struggling to make a mark .

This could well be due to their loss of status  as the official opposition   due to Dafydd Ellis Thomas defecting to the Labour government  benches  and the suspension of Neil McEvoy.

This has led to the unionist media giving more space to Tory leader Andrew RT Davies  rather than Leanne Wood.

Of course things can change quickly but for now it seems business as usual.
 

1 comment:

Leigh Richards said...

Think what's happening is that now brexit is going to happen former kipper voters in wales are coalescing around the tories. And while it's depressing to see the tories still polling so well in wales we can take some heart i think from the fact that in supporting plaid and labour around 60 percent of the welsh electorate support left of centre parties. So despite the vote for brexit in wales in 2016 Wales is still a left leaning country.