Scotland/Wales 2007

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The RCT byelection was in a ward where there are three councillors - two PC and one Lab. It was the Labour seat which was vacant so a Plaid gain would have been likely, however Labour held on with a 10% favourable swing. Rhondda is a constituency Plaid Cymru won in 1999 and they also controlled the council until 2004.

The ward was actually Treorchy; home to the now closed Burberry factory. And the by-election was on the day before the factory closed; it was to have been held on the same day as the Assembly election, but Plaid wanted it at an earlier date.
Treorchy has also been one of Plaid's best wards in the Rhondda for (IIRC) decades; it'd seem as though the local Labour party's activism over the factory closure helped the Labour candidate a lot.

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Apparently the Labour vote in the rural areas themselves is holding up fairly well. The problem in those seats is that turnout in the Tory elephant's graveyards is probably going to be a lot higher than in the council estates.

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I've heard bad things about that. Very bad things. Swansea West also.

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My guess is 36%; same as the regional/PR vote in 2003.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Apparently the rumour was wrong. Still, I'd be surprised if the actual poll is different to those figures by more than the MoE.

In any case a reminder that polls in Wales tend to be a load of rubbish is probably needed. Here be the NOP numbers for 2003:

Lab 39%, Plaid 31%, LDem 15%, Con 11%

And beyond the overestimate of Plaid (and how bad this is varies a great deal), other parties can be badly overestimated as well; Labour was overestimated in 1999 and IIRC the pollsters somehow managed to overestimate the Tories in the 2001 General Election.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Remember; beyond overestimating Plaid (and even then that's more at Assembly level than anything else) there's no real consistency as to which party polls done in Wales overestimate. Here's a poll from the 2001 General Election:

Lab 45%, Con 25%, Plaid 15%, LDem 13% (Actual: Lab 48%, Con 21%, Plaid 14%, LDem 14%)

To be honest I don't think any polls are going to tell us any more than what is already known; and if they do seem to tell more, this being Wales, they'll likely be inaccurate.

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That's basically still MoE.

Well, yeah, but it's an example that a certain party isn't always serious underepresented either.

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What, a Welsh poll that looks... reasonable?

*thud*

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In other news... if evidence was needed that Ieuan Wyn Jones is vulnerable (exactly who too is a matter of debate; depending on turnout patterns Ynys Môn could go one of four ways), he's come out in favour of a new nuclear power station on Anglesey; something that goes directly against his own manifesto.
The Tory, Labour and Indie candidates in his constituency are all strongly in favour of building a new nuclear power station.

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The other day Plaid released an "internal poll" showing them on 30% and the Tories in the teens. The Labour and LibDem figures were basically the same as the NOP poll.

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Labour worried in Renfrewshire West; many expect a loss increasingly to the third place Tories rather than the SNP.

Well it did go Tory in 1983 and is (IIRC) quite middle class (I say IIRC because I'm still not entirely sure that labour market classifications that work well in England and Wales are so useful in Scotland. It's certainly seems to be more middle class than the U.K, let alone Scottish, average though). Doesn't seem impossible really.

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Interesting, but how credible is it? Presumably the threat in Tweedale is the SNP?

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lol; presumably this goes into the same catagory as the various Plaid wet-dreams that floated all around teh interwebs until NOP released their poll?

For what it's worth I'm told that the LibDems are worried about Montgomery, that Labour are worried about Swansea West, that the Tories aren't as confident about the Vale of Glamorgan as they should be on paper (because of local politics I think) and that Plaid are very, very worried about Ynys Môn.

Oh and several Labour candidates have been claiming that their canvassing is better this year than in 2003. None of these candidates is running in a Costa Bureaucratica or Costa Geriatrica constituency. Make of that what thou will and so on.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually the poll that gave the SNP double digit leads looks dodgy as well; as does all of System Three's rubbish (apparently that particular firm likes to go out of it's way to further wreck whatever is left of it's reputation).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Could anybody comment on this Welsh poll:

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15368

Have already, but for what it's worth; it actually looks "about right", something very unusual for a Welsh poll.

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As expected really

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Constituency 21%, List 20%.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's the fact that parties are rubbishing the idea of voting SNP (rather than promoting themselves) and those who support them (as Blair has done to businessmen) that is probably cementing alot of suport for them.

Probably true actually

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It is if the people keep on voting for that party. But it wouldn't be (not really) if another party won an election but was kept out of power by a backroom deal (or to put it another way; if the SNP win the Scottish election (and by win I mean emerge as the largest party) then they should be given at least a chance to form a government).

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So when is the last time Labour won a majority of the Scottish vote?

No idea; 1966 maybe? (of course the party system was different then).
I think the Lab/Lib coalition took, just, a majority of constituency votes in the '99 and '03 elections though (but not the regional vote. Nowhere near).
Of course how relevant the % polled by a post-election coalition is is disputable; I mean a Lab/Lib/Con coalition would have taken a majority of the vote, even at regional level, but would have very little public support or legitimacy.

My point wasn't a specific one though; more that I disagree with the idea that control of government changing hands is essential to a democracy. Power changing hands if the people vote for it to do so is though.

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I don't think any party has ever managed that (the Liberals probably did with Scots eligable to vote before 1918 though). In the last Holyrood elections most Scots of voting age didn't even vote.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The STUC’s general council decided to endorse Labour in the Holyrood and local elections by just one vote. PCS and Unison respresenting public sector workers were against a move to support Labour. They were joined by the Fire Brigades Union, the UCU university lecturers union and the RMT who also opposed endorsing Labour. A call for union members to recognise that having Labour councillors, MSPs and a Labour Executive was "in the best interest of Scottish workers" was put to the vote in the general council on Sunday and passed by 14 votes to 13. Unison eventually chose to abstain.

While the PCS, FBU and UCU aren't affiliated to Labour, Unison is... so this seems a little odd. Are relations between the Executive and the Public Sector unions that bad at the moment?
Interesting to see quite how strong the Public Sector unions are in relation to the manufacturing unions in Scotland though.

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Rhodri Morgan has said, in a BBC interview, that he would probably have voted against the invasion of Iraq had he still been an M.P at the time.

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An interesting (or not?) development; shortly after Labour's candidate for Ynys Môn said in a TV programme that Labour wasn't going to enter a coalition with any party following the elections, Labour made a point of completely and utterly disowning what he said.
O/c the party has certainly indicated before that a coalition is possible, but this is the first time (I think) that they've actually said so.

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The electoral system used in Scotland and Wales was quite badly designed IMO.

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The electoral system used in Scotland and Wales was quite badly designed IMO.

Blame Labour's strange aversion to STV at the time!

I do! The late '90's were the height of party leadership's control-freakery (thinking of certain rigged internal elections in London and Wales here... almost as bad as the stuff Transport House got up to in it's glory days. Note the "almost"...) o/c, which explains the aversion to STV. But not why they didn't go with closed-list PR with Turkish-style thresholds.

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The BBC claims that Labour intends to strike a deal with Plaid after the election; while a formal coalition is apparently unlikely, the BBC "understands" that Labour would be prepared to make major policy concessions in return for support on issues of confidence and on the budget.

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Labour: Deny it

Sort of; Morgan has denied being involved in any such negotiations. And Hain has said that Labour members "wouldn't wear a coalition with Plaid". There is a noticable gap there.

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Yes; all they've denied is the possibility of supporting the Welsh Assembly Government on an informal basis.

There's something going on, but it's not clear what...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(in light of Westminster polls that have them on 27%)

One poll did and it was by a less-than-reputable company. It also showed the Tories doing only a wee bit better than in 2005.

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As for the poll itself, a guess...

Labour will be at 35% (+/-3pts), the Tories at around 22% ('' ''), Plaid around 20% ('' '') and the LibDems at around 14% ('' ''). Anything outside that would look "wrong" and probably would be.

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Oh and a poll has been published about possible coalitions; 19% of voters want a Lab/Lib coalition, 17% want a Lab/Plaid coalition and 7% want a Con/Plaid/Lib coalition.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How do you think a right of centre nationalist (pro-independence) party would do in Wales?

So long as they didn't make a big issue out of independence (even Plaid don't do that) they might be able to do fairly well (say about 10% in Assembly elections, less at Westminster). They would mainly take votes from Plaid (there's always been a right-wing element in that party, going all the way back to that pseudo-fascist Saunders Lewis) but, so long as independence wasn't a huge issue for the party, they might be able to take a fairly large chunk out of the Tory vote in western Wales.
O/c that's assuming that such a party would be representative of rural conservatism; a right-wing urban nationalist party might be able to do fairly well in Cardiff and it's suburbs (note that the urban constituency with the highest number of people claiming to be Welsh speakers is Cardiff North!), but would bomb just about everywhere else.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How do you think a right of centre nationalist (pro-independence) party would do in Wales?

So long as they didn't make a big issue out of independence (even Plaid don't do that)

Plaid are not in favor of independence at all. Never (officially) have been.

What exactly does Plaid stand for, then!?

Self-government but not actual, complete independence IIRC. Not that it matters anyway; independence isn't on the political agenda in Wales, never has been.

O/c in practice people mainly vote for them due to the language issue.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Regional figures:

Lab 34%, Plaid 24%, Tory 18%, LDem 15%

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This time round the numbers "look wrong"... a little bit anyway (even if certain basics look right). For one thing it would be amazing if Labour polled a higher % on the list than constituency vote... sure, there's always an MoE excuse I guess, but it doesn't stop it looking any stranger.

The Plaid and Tory figures also look a little fishy; especially as Plaid made some very loud complaints about NOP's last poll (which made some adjustments according to likelyhood of voting that lowered the Plaid vote). If the methodology of this poll is different to the previous one (and I have suspicion that this might be the case), then it's not even directly comparable... which would be "quite" irritating...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh and there's going to be another poll published next week. Sadly it's by the company that works as Plaid's private pollsters so it could well be one to just ignore.