Labour to win in Wales, poll
LABOUR supporters across Wales will start today with high hopes that the party will not just hold onto its seats but win back the constituencies it lost in 2015.
The latest YouGov poll put Labour support in Wales at 46%, ahead of the Conservatives (34%), Plaid Cymru (9%) and the Lib Dems and Ukip (both on 5%).
This suggests Carwyn Jones’ party has a shot at winning back Gower and the Vale of Clwyd from the Tories. Such wins would mark a remarkable revival in the fortunes of a party which in April looked on course to be pushed into second place behind the Conservatives.
However, a ComRes poll of voters across Great Britain put the Conservatives at 44%, 10 points ahead of Labour.
Prime Minister Theresa May sought to put the focus on Brexit, saying: “If we get Brexit right, we can build a Britain that is more prosperous and more secure.”
Jeremy Corbyn urged people to show “hope can triumph over fear”.
LABOUR is on course to maintain its long-standing electoral dominance in Wales, according to the final Welsh opinion poll of the General Election.
Carried out by You Gov for Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre and ITV Cymru Wales, the poll even suggests the party could win back two seats it lost to the Conservatives at the last election in 2015.
It does, however, also show the Conservatives on the brink of their highest vote share in Wales for more than a century.
At the same time, the apparent move back towards two-party politics sees both Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats potentially facing their lowest vote shares for many years.
The poll was conducted between Monday and yesterday, and the pollsters sought to provide a final measure of voting intentions as close as possible to election day itself.
After a campaign that has seen wild fluctuations in the opinion polls, and particularly so here in Wales, the final poll shows Labour on 46% (no change from last week’s poll); the Conservatives on 35% (-1); Plaid Cymru on 9% (+1); Liberal Democrats 5% (no change): Ukip 5% (no change; and Others 1% (+1).
There are no big changes since last week’s previous poll, and all movements are well within the margin of error.
Using the normal method of projecting these polling numbers – computing uniform national swings since the 2015 general election for all 40 constituencies in Wales – the latest poll implies that Labour will win 27 seats (+2 from 2015); the Conservatives 9 seats (-2); Plaid Cymru 3 seats (no change); and Liberal Democrats 1 seat (no change).
Professor Roger Scully of the Wales Governance Centre said: “After the first two polls of the campaign had suggested the Conservatives were on course to make substantial seat gains in Wales from Labour, and possibly even come first in both seats and votes, things have certainly changed around dramatically in recent weeks.
“Labour have fought back strongly. If these figures are born out in the election, the Conservatives would gain their largest share of the vote in Wales at a general election since before World War I.
“Yet they may not gain any seats for this, because Labour, this poll indicates, may themselves be about to secure their highest vote share in Wales since the second Tony Blair landslide victory of 2001.
“On uniform swings, only two seats are projected to change hands in Wales from 2015: Labour would regain both seats they lost to the Conservatives two years ago, Gower and the Vale of Clwyd.”
Prof Scully said that, as had been the case in all previous polls during the current campaign, uniform swing suggested that Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats remained on course to hold the few seats they currently have, but would not make any gains.
But he added: “Both parties may also be facing a vote share decline from that in 2015. In Plaid’s case [that would be] to the lowest level seen since the general election of 1992, and for the Lib Dems the worst general election they or their predecessor parties have ever experienced in Wales.”
Striking a note of caution about both the polling figures and how votes translate into seats, Prof Scully said: “The general election just two years ago demonstrated that the polls are not flawless; this one will be the first major test of some of the changes that the various polling companies introduced in the wake of the 2015 election. Recent weeks have seen some of the major polling companies produce quite different findings in Britain-wide polls: all of them have shown the Conservative lead to have fallen substantially, but they disagree about the extent of that fall and the size of the continuing Tory lead.
“We must also remember that uniform national swing provides simply a baseline method for projecting polling results onto the electoral map. Even if this final Welsh poll turns out to be perfect in terms of vote shares – and I suspect everyone, including You Gov, would be pleasantly surprised if the poll truly is perfect – then the results in terms of seats may well not follow those indicated by uniform swing.
“Particularly effective candidates and campaigns, or indeed strikingly ineffective ones, can make a significant difference. In 2015, a uniform projection of the actual swings that occurred across Wales would not have indicated that the Conservatives would gain either Gower or the Vale of Clwyd from Labour: the Tories needed above average swings to capture both seats.
“The one thing we can say for certain about changes in Wales’ 40 constituencies since the 2015 election is that they will not be absolutely uniform for all parties in all places.”
Prof Scully said a final note of necessary caution concerned from where the main parties were getting their support: “There has long been a pattern of Labour tending to do relatively better among younger voters and the Conservatives gathering more support from older ones,” he said. “But the extent of that disparity in recent polls, including this final Welsh poll, is truly extraordinary. The sub-sample of voters aged 18-24 in our new poll shows fully 73% intending to vote Labour, and only 14% supporting the Conservatives.
“Among voters aged 65 and above, some 56% intend to vote Conservative and only 27% Labour.
“Older voters have long also tended to be more reliable in actually coming out to vote on the day. Having enthused many younger voters, the key task for Labour must now be to ensure that they actually turn out; if they do not, Labour could still face serious difficulties in this election.”
Prof Scully said it had been “an extraordinary campaign for an unanticipated election”, adding: “Not least of the extraordinary features has been the substantial
turbulence in the opinion polls.
“Our final Welsh poll, however, suggests that we may be on course for ‘business as usual,’ at least in terms of who wins the seats.
“Labour have come first in both votes and seats at every general election in Wales from 1922 onwards. The last person to defeat Labour in a general election here was Lloyd George – and he had just won a World War!
“If our final poll of the campaign is broadly correct, the Welsh Labour Party will score its 26th general election victory in a row.
“That may not be enough to put Jeremy Corbyn into 10 Downing Street, but after a campaign that started with Labour looking under greater electoral pressure than for a century in Wales, it would still be a remarkable achievement.”
The poll had a sample of 1,074 Welsh adults.
Meanwhile, on a Britain-wide level there were contradictory messages from polls about the likely result of the election.
A daily constituency-by-constituency estimate by pollster YouGov suggested Tories could take 302 Commons seats – down 28 from the end of the previous parliament – compared with Labour’s 269 (up 40), with the Scottish National Party on 44 (down 10) and the Lib Dems on 12 (up three), denying any party the 323 MPs they need for an absolute majority.
However, in a further demonstration of the wide variation in findings as the election approached, a Press Association “poll of polls” taking in 10 results from the past week – not including the YouGov seat-by-seat model – put the Conservatives on 44%, seven points clear of Labour on 37%, with the Liberal Democrats on 8%, Ukip on 4% and the Greens on 2%.
The final ICM poll for the Guardian gave the Conservatives a 12-point lead of 46% to Labour’s 34%. This is up from David Cameron’s sevenpoint victory two years ago and represents a swing to the Conservatives of 2.5%.
The ICM results pointed to a Tory majority of 96 on Electoral Calculus estimates and it is at the higher end of seat predictions but still short of the landslide many pundits were predicting six weeks ago.
“This final poll confirms the pattern that ICM has produced over the last fortnight: a fairly healthy and static Conservative share with consolidation of the Labourbump first witnessed after the manifesto publication,” said ICM’s Martin Boon.
The detail of the Guardian/ICM poll confirms Corbyn’s popularity among younger voters with a lead of 66-23 among 18 to 24 year olds and 47-33 among 25 to 33 year olds but declared intended turnout of both these groups at 64% and 70% is 10 points below other age groups.
Perhaps more importantly the Conservatives seem to have won the battle of the working class with an even larger 23-point lead for May among the key skilled working class C2 voters often found in many marginal swing seats across the Midlands. However, Labour seemed to have halted the Tory advance among unskilled DE voters where it has regained a modest two-point 38-36 lead.
More disappointing for Labour is that the Tories enjoy a slim one-point lead in the marginal seats it is defending by 45% to 44%.
Insiders in both parties concede that a healthy 50-plus Conservative majority is the most likely outcome.
In the meantime the minor parties have been sidelined with the collapse of Ukip in particular fuelling the expected scale of Conservative victory.
A Comres poll for the Independent gave the Tories a 10-point lead over Labour. The poll had the Tories down three points on 44%, Labour down one point on 34%, the Lib Dems up one on 9%, Ukip up one on 5%, the SNP on 4% and the Greens on 2%.
Half of 2015 UKIP voters say they will now vote Conservative, potentially adding two million votes, or around 6% points to the Tory vote share.