Want to be a Welsh Politician? Change your name to Elwyn Davies.

Professor Roger Scully over at Elections in Wales has presented us with a interesting but depressing picture  how much the Welsh Electorate know their elected politicians.

He writes 

We asked our survey respondents about all four types of elected politician we have in Wales above the level of councillor – MPs, constituency AMs, regional AMs and MEPs. I will now present some of the main results that these questions produced.

Name Recognition for Respondents’ MPs Response % Correct Answer 70% Incorrect Answer 9% No response 21%

Not a a great start remember except the participants were given a list of names in which their MP name was  listed

• NAME OF ACTUAL MP
• Andrew Farmer
• Morgan Thomas
• Sarah Cole
• Rhiannon Griffiths
• James Evans

Next we have recognition of AM's

Name Recognition for Respondents’ Constituency AMs

Response	%
Correct Answer	53%
Incorrect Answer	15%
No response	32%

Even worse, and remember they were prompted 

• NAME OF ACTUAL AM
• Gemma Davies
• Simon Jones
• Lowri Jenkins
• Paul Granger
• Martyn Hughes

What of the regional AM

Name Recognition for Respondents’ Regional AMs 

Response	%
Both correct, none incorrect	2%
One correct, none incorrect	21%
Two correct, at least one incorrect	1%
One correct, at least one incorrect	2%
At least one incorrect, none correct	14%
No response	60%

74% failed to get even one right though this time I accept that the name prompt did not help

The Names were randomised  so it might be helpful to know a breakdown on a consituency basis where the strength of certain parties and I am sure how someone could get two correct and one correct unless they tried to name more than two actual regiaonal AM

• NAME OF ONE OF ACTUAL REGIONAL AMS
• NAME OF A SECOND ACTUAL REGIONAL AM
• Robert Myers
• Mohammed Salim
• Sara Burns
• Carys Price

But the real shocker was the failure of the respondents to recognize  even one of the four MEPs

• 
  

Name Recognition for Welsh MEPs

Response	%
Both correct, none incorrect	2%
One correct, none incorrect	14%
Two correct, at least one incorrect	1%
One correct, at least one incorrect	3%
At least one incorrect, none correct	18%
No response	63%

• NAME OF ONE OF ACTUAL MEP
• NAME OF A SECOND ACTUAL MEP
• David Sherwood
• Elwyn Davies
• Lynn Goodwin
• Jenny Green

This time we were given the actual figures for recognition

• Name Recognition for Individual MEPs/False Names
• Name % Selected
• Derek Vaughan 9%
• Nathan Gill 16%
• Kay Swinburne 6%
• Jill Evans 11%
• David Sherwood 5%
• Elwyn Davies 12%
• Lynn Goodwin 5%
• Jenny Green 5%

Again these were randomised so it might be interesting to see where  where the names were changed

Nathan Gill tops the list though this might well be his recent high profile that his  election to the assembly and the subsequent publicity  gave him

Second was the fictitious Elwyn Davies on 12% where I suspect his name led some wrongly guessing that he was aPlaid MEP rather than the long serving Jill Evans on 11%

Labour Derek Vaughn on 9& and the Tories  Kim Swinbourne on 6% fared even worse.

Does this show a failure of our political parties to communicate or apathy amongst voters.

I suspect the latter

It a pity that the participants  weren't asked if they voted in any of the elections above and f there was any correlation  between recognition of politicians  and actual voting ,

In the meantime If I was an aspiring politician I might well consider changing my name to Elwyn Davies by Deed Poll.