Latest Opinion polls see some Plaid comfort.

The annual BBC Wales St David’s Day.has seen little change in Westminster voting intentions but a shift in the Welsh Assembly predictions.

Professor Roger Scully who has been doing the number  crunching writes

First, let’s look at voting intentions for a general election. These are the figures produced by ICM. (As we have no recent evidence from ICM in Wales to compare with, in brackets I will show the changes on the percentage vote share that each party won at last year’s general election. Anyone wishing to compare these figures with those from the last Welsh Political Barometer poll by YouGov should click here.)
Westminster Voting Intention

Labour: 49% (+0.1) Conservatives: 32% (-1.6) Plaid Cymru: 11% (+0.6) Liberal Democrats: 5% (+0.5) UKIP: 2% (no change) Others: 3% (+2.5)

So if there was a General Election tomorrow  on a uniform   there would be probably no change in Wales in Westminster MP's. Which is bad news for Labour who despite  the Tories Brexit mess are nowhere near the 1997 level which saw every Tory MP in Wales lose their seat.

Its also remarkable that there is still no sign of a Liberal Democrat revival (apart for local government byelections) and it seems tier hopes their Anti-Brexit voters will back them seems (at the moment  in vain).

Of course as we found out last year things can change dramatically in the weeks leading up to polling day, but talk of Jeremy Corbyn forcing a Commons defeat on Mrs May and another elections are not favoured with the above and UK polls.


Profffesor Scully continues

 

What about the National Assembly? ICM found the following levels of support for the parties on the constituency ballot (with changes since the last Assembly election again indicated in brackets):

National Assembly Constituency Voting Intention
Labour: 40% (+5.3) Plaid Cymru: 24% (+3.5) Conservatives: 22% (+0.9) Liberal Democrats: 6% (-1.7) UKIP: 5% (-7.5) Others: 3% (-0.5)

Once again we see Labour in a substantial lead. However, this poll gives rather more encouragement for Plaid Cymru than did the last Barometer poll, which had them down on 19 percent for the constituency ballot. Conversely, this poll is less good for the Welsh Conservatives, who were on 26 percent in the November Barometer poll. ICM do seem to confirm, however, the lack of any progress being made by the Welsh Lib-Dems, and that UKIP now have much lower support levels than at the time of the May 2016 Assembly election.
Rather remarkably, if we use uniform swing to project the changes since 2016 suggested by this poll onto all seats in Wales, it indicates not a single constituency seat changing hands! This reflects the fact that in 2016 many constituencies were held by Labour despite their overall vote share falling substantially; the new poll simply projects those seats to become more comfortable Labour ‘holds’. The nearest any seat comes to being projected to change is Aberconwy, but on these figures Plaid Cymru fall narrowly short of gaining it from the Conservatives.
What about the regional ballot? ICM got these results (with changes on 2016 again in brackets):

National Assembly Regional Voting Intention
Labour: 36% (+4.5) Plaid Cymru: 22% (+1.2) Conservatives: 21% (+2.2) UKIP: 8% (-5.0)
Liberal Democrats: 6% (-0.5) Others: 5% (-4.5)

 
This, in turn, gives us the following overall projected result for the National Assembly:

Labour 30 seats (27 constituency, 3 regional) + 1
Plaid Cymru 15 seats (6 constituency, 9 regional)  + 3
Conservative 13 seats (6 constituency, 7 regional) + 2
UKIP 1 seat (1 regional)  -6
Liberal Democrats 1 seat (1 constituency) No change 


So Plaid the big winners , but no change in Labour dominance of the Welsh Assembly assuming Kirsty Williams (The former La Pasionaria) of the oppositio9n benches rejoins the cabine in not a coalition"  



Mind you if Dafydd Elis Thomas tands as an Independent in  Dwyfor Meirionnydd it might make  an impact/

Elections in the 2010s

Welsh Assembly Election 2016: Dwyfor Meirionnydd

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Plaid Cymru	Dafydd Elis-Thomas	9,566	47.3	+0.7
	Conservative	Neil Fairlamb	3,160	15.6	−4.8
	Labour	Ian MacIntyre	2,443	12.1	−0.6
	UKIP	Frank Wykes	2,149	10.6	+10.6
	Independent	Louise Hughes	1,259	6.2	+6.2
	Liberal Democrats	Stephen Churchman	916	4.5	−0.3
	Green	Alice Hooker-Stroud	743	3.7	+3.7
Majority			6,406
Turnout				46.7
	Plaid Cymru hold		Swing	+0.4

How much personal vote does he have? Could he win as an Independent  or split the Plaid vote and let Labour or the Torrieswin.



Will Labour stand against him  or either endorse him or even see Dafydd El as the Labour candidate.


If they lost Dwyfor Meirionnydd it  would be a blow for Plaid if not affecting  their overall seat allocation making it up on the regional lists.  Though this may have already been included in Professor Scully ) predictions,.

 Its a long way to go and the current Labour internal problems are set to continue , how this will effect them (given the lack of political coverage in the media here) may be a major factor in  2021.