The Watershed Election

From Planet 183

John Osmond considers the Assembly Election results

Labour expected to win at least 27 seats in the May 2007 Assembly election and on that basis planned to carry on running Wales, albeit as a minority administration. In the event they came one seat short of achieving their objective, conceding the fourth list seat in Mid and West Wales to Plaid Cymru by just 500 votes.

However, examine these results from a different perspective and the conclusion must be that Labour was extraordinarily lucky to win 26 seats. The fact that they did reflects the arbitrary, essentially disproportional, character of the Additional Member system of partial proportional representation used to elect the Assembly. Labour now has 43 per cent of the seats on the basis of 31 per cent of the vote (averaged across the constituency and list results).

In all Labour lost six constituency seats, gained one (dissident John Marek’s Wrexham) and picked up two on the list in Mid and West Wales. At the same time they came within a handful of votes of losing the Vale of Glamorgan, the Vale of Clwyd and Delyn to the Tories (see Table 1). If they had lost these seats, it would have meant a new government within days rather than weeks of the election, with Plaid’s Dafydd Wigley being returned on the North Wales list.

An examination of the Welsh constituencies, ordered by the majority achieved by winning parties (Table 1), reveals a new crop of marginals, most of them Labour’s to lose next time. There are now 15 seats which have majorities of less than 2,000, most of them Labour. The exceptions are two held by the Conservatives (Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South, and Clwyd West), one by Plaid Cymru (Aberconwy) and one by the Liberal Democrats (Montgomery). Remarkably, of the three safest seats in Wales, two are now held by Plaid Cymru and one by the Conservatives.

This was Labour’s worst election result in Wales since 1918. Tables 2 and 3 show how Labour’s Assembly vote has steadily declined since 1999. In these calculations it is as important to record the actual votes cast as the percentages, since we are dealing with differential turn-out from election to election. In 2003 Labour’s percentage of the constituency vote rose slightly, from 37.6 per cent to 40 per cent. But this was because the turn-out in the election was low, falling from 46 per cent in 1999 to just 38 per cent. As Table 2 makes clear, the actual numbers voting for the party fell substantially, by some 44,136 votes. And in 2007, despite the turn-out increasing to 44 per cent, the numbers voting for Labour fell again, by a further 25,610. Labour’s share of the list vote declined even more steeply, as Table 3 shows.

Across the country voters coalesced around whoever had the best chance of defeating Rhodri Morgan’s incumbent government. In Preseli Pembrokeshire, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Clwyd West and Cardiff North it was the Tories. In Llanelli, Ceredigion, and Aberconwy it was Plaid Cymru. In Blaenau Gwent it was the Independent Trish Law. Labour might well have lost Caerphilly and Islwyn to Plaid if Independents, including devolution architect Ron Davies, had not intervened and split the anti-Labour vote.

Labour’s share of the vote fell in 39 out of the 40 constituencies. The exception was Cardiff Central where, in second place, the party was three points up on 2003 but still 30 points adrift from the Liberal Democrats’ Jenny Randerson. Even in Wrexham, which Labour regained, it fell back three points compared with 2003. Overall Labour saw its percentage vote fall by just under eight points to 32.2 per cent, exactly the same as its share of the constituency vote in Scotland. As Aberystwyth psephologist Roger Scully observed, “This is the first time that Labour’s vote share in Wales has NOT been greater than in Scotland since 1924, when they were also on dead level at 40.6 per cent.”

How far can Labour’s share of the vote decline? There is no doubt that the trend in their vote is downwards while those of their main opponents, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru, are upwards. The Conservatives benefited from the popularity of David Cameron and favourable coverage in the London press, reflected in strong leads for the party in the UK polls in the run-up to the Assembly election. In May 2007 the Welsh Conservatives arguably came near to maximising their support at 22.4 per cent. Certainly it is the case that in most seats where they came a close second in 2003 they focused their efforts and their support surged.