Welsh Labour’s battle on two fronts - the rise of Reform and Plaid
Ahead of next year’s Senedd elections, Welsh politics is looking more unpredictable than ever. The country has been a Labour stronghold since the Welsh Assembly was created in 1999, where Labour have never won less than 26 of the 60 seats - a particularly impressive record in a proportional system. However, this upcoming election is uniquely interesting due to a new electoral system, an expanded Senedd, and strong performances from Plaid Cymru and Reform UK in the 2024 General Election, as well as the current struggles of the Labour party across the UK. At Stack, we polled 750 Welsh adults asking their Senedd voting intention, as well as their views towards various potential governing coalitions. These results were weighted by age, gender, education, ethnicity, age interlocked with 2024 general election vote, gender interlocked with 2024 General Election vote and education interlocked with 2024 General Election vote.
Significant losses have seen Labour slip to third in our Senedd poll, as seen in Figure 1, with Plaid holding a very narrow lead over both them and Reform. If replicated next year, this would represent Plaid's best result since 1999, while Labour would face a historically poor result. Elsewhere, Reform’s rise mirrors their UK-wide surge, while the Conservative’s vote has almost halved since 2021.
Looking at the voter flows from the 2024 General Election, which are highlighted in Figure 2, they show the decline of the two traditional parties towards the traditionally smaller parties on their respective flanks. Over half of Labour’s defectors now plan to vote for Plaid, while over a quarter of all 2024 Conservative voters now prefer Reform for the Senedd. While Plaid have always been a force in Welsh Assembly and Senedd elections, the rise of Reform, coupled with the decline of the traditionally larger parties, shows the wider fragmentation of the party system in Wales.
Figure 1: Stack Senedd voting intention polling. Numbers on top of the bars show percentage change compared to the Region list vote in the 2021 Senedd Election.
Figure 2: Voter flows from the 2024 General Election to current Senedd VI from Stack polling. Sample sizes for 2024 Liberal Democrat, Green and Other voters are below 50 and such results for these groups should not be seen as representative of the wider voter group.
Figure 3: Projected Senedd election results by applying voter flows from Stack polling to the results of the 2024 General Election in the new Senedd constituencies
Given how tight the polling is looking at the Senedd level, it is important to look at how these results would translate into seats under the new Senedd electoral system. This system has seen the 32 Westminster constituencies paired up to create 16 new constituencies which each proportionally elect six members. Applying these voter flows from our polling to the 2024 election results in each of the combined Senedd constituencies allows us to estimate how many seats each party will win in each constituency. Based on our polling, Plaid are on track to be the largest party, though they would only hold a one seat lead over both Labour and Reform. Rhun ap Iowerth could potentially become Wales’s first non-Labour First Minister but would rely on Labour backing, either through a coalition or confidence and supply deal. Additionally, despite Reform’s strong performance, their routes to power are very limited as their only likely coalition party, the Conservatives, only win 12 seats, and leave the two parties far short of a majority.
Looking deeper at the potential coalitions that could be formed following the next Senedd election, all of the coalitions tested have between -2% and -11% net approval, as Figure 4 shows, suggesting that the Welsh public do not particularly approve of any of the options on the table. The status quo, Labour’s minority Government, is the least popular option, while the two most likely coalition outcomes based on our polling, a coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru, and a Plaid Cymru minority Government, are also the two most popular. Plaid voters approve more of their party ruling alone as a minority, rather than in coalition with the Labour party, while Labour voters would rather form a coalition with Plaid than see Labour continue as a minority administration. The other two coalitions tested were a Reform minority and a coalition between Reform and the Conservatives. Similar to Plaid voters, Reform voters would prefer forming a minority government than entering a coalition, in their case with the Conservatives. Conservative voters are more ambivalent about a Reform minority government than the Labour or Plaid governments tested, but are positive about joining a coalition with Reform.
Figure 4: Net approval of potential Welsh Government coalitions broken out by Senedd vote intention.