Latest Welsh Barometer Poll shows Labour are fighting back

The latest YouGov/ITV Wales poll of Welsh voters shows that the Conservative lead over Labour has narrowed from ten points in late April to six points now, with the two parties on 41% and 35% respectively.

These findings are in line with the results of YouGov’s GB-wide polls over the same time period, where a 23 point Conservative lead around the time of the last Welsh poll has since shrank slightly to 19 points.

Elsewhere, Plaid Cymru are on 11%, the Liberal Democrats are on 7%, UKIP are on 4% and votes for other parties are on 2%.

The poll, conducted for ITV-Cymru Wales and Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre by YouGov from 5-7 May 2017 shows Labour rising 5% on the previous poll published on April 24.

New Wales Political Barometer:
Westminster VI
Con 41% (+1)
Lab 35% (+5)
PC 11% (-2)
LD 7% (-1)
UKIP 4% (-2)
Others: 2% (-1)

— WalesGovernanceCntre (@WalesGovernance) May 8, 2017

The Conservatives are still on course for a historic triumph at the general election says Professor Roger Sculley from  Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre.

“The big change on our previous poll is clearly the recovery in Labour support. After doing exceptionally badly in the last poll, they have now pulled back within two percentage points of their Welsh vote share in the last general election.

Yet Labour have not been able to eat into Conservative support at all. Although barely changed since our last poll, the Tories’ 41 percent is a new high for them in any Welsh opinion poll, ever.

At this early stage of the general election campaign, the two largest parties seem to be squeezing the smaller ones: Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP have all seen their support edge downwards since two weeks ago.”

Based on the latest poll, Alyn and Deeside would still see a Conservative win says Professor Roger Sculley;

“If we follow standard practice and project these results onto Wales using uniform national swings since the 2015 general election, then our latest poll implies the following overall result. (Projected changes from the 2015 result are in brackets):

Conservatives: 20 seats (+9)
Labour: 16 seats (-9)
Plaid Cymru: 3 seats (no change)
Liberal Democrats: 1 seat (no change)

In his latest post on Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre blog Prof Sculley writes;

‘With our previous poll, Plaid and the Liberal Democrats are projected to hold the seats they currently have but make no gains.

Despite the recovery in Labour support since our previous poll, the Conservatives are still projected to gain nine seats from Labour including Alyn and Deeside, Delyn and Wrexham.

Although this projection is one seat better for Labour than our last poll, such a result would nonetheless decisively break Labour’s record of coming first in both votes and seats in Wales at every general election from 1922 onwards.’

“Labour showed considerable resilience in last week’s local elections, this poll provides further evidence that Labour – who have been the dominant party in Wales for nearly a century – are not quite ready to roll over and die“ says Prof Scully.

“It is possible that our previous poll slightly overstated the extent of Labour decline, and they clearly remain very much ‘in the game’ in a large number of seats in Wales,” he said.