Poll puts Plaid Cymru ahead in Wales for Westminster election

Martin Shipton

A poll that has to be treated with caution because of its low sample has put Plaid Cymru seven points ahead of Reform UK at a notional general election in Wales.

The YouGov poll, which was carried out on a Britain-wide basis, shows its results on a country-by-country basis.

The figures for Wales put Plaid Cymru on 28%, with Reform on 21%, the Green Party on 19%, Labour on 15%, the Conservatives on 12% and the Liberal Democrats on 4%. Other parties were at 2%.

The unweighted sample was 121 voters, with the weighted sample being 114. Research was carried out on November 2 and November 3.

Professional pollsters are reluctant to draw conclusions from polls with such low figures, but the results are nevertheless extraordinary.

The Green Party posted a message on X drawing attention to the fact that it was in third place, ahead of Labour and the Conservatives.

While Plaid Cymru has been performing well in recent polls, it is especially unusual for it to be leading in Wales in a Westminster general election poll. It usually performs significantly better in Senedd elections than in general elections.

In England, Reform was in the lead with 28%, followed by Labour on 20%, the Conservatives on 18%, the Liberal Democrats and Greens both on 16% and other parties on 2%. The unweighted sample in England was 2,082 and the weighted sample 2,055.

In Scotland the SNP led with 35%, with Reform on 19%, Labour on 18%, the Liberal Democrats and Greens on 10%, the Conservatives on 4% and other parties on 2%. The unweighted sample was 207 and the weighted sample 173.

Across Britain as a whole, Reform was on 27%, Labour 20%, Green 18%, Conservarives 16%, Liberal Democrats 15%, the SNP 3%, Plaid Cymru 1% and other parties 2%.

Lottery

At Westminster level, translating votes into seats in something of a lottery because of the First Past The Post electoral system.

A week ago, Darren Hughes the chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society said in relation to an earlier YouGov poll: “If there were a general election tomorrow, who would form the next government? It sounds like a simple question if you have access to the latest polls. But when the latest YouGov poll, released on October 28, shows Reform UK on 27%, Labour and the Conservatives tied on 17% each, the Greens on 16%, Liberal Democrats on 15%, and the SNP on 3%, it’s anything but.

“It’s a striking poll for a few reasons, the old duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives have a combined vote share of 34%, a massive collapse from 2017, when over 80% of votes went to those two parties (the highest combined vote share since 1970). The Greens have their highest poll share ever on 16% and four parties sit within three percentage points from each other.

“We live in a multi-party Britain. But under Westminster’s First Past the Post voting system, it’s impossible to tell what Parliament would actually look like from this poll.

“Yet voters are supposed to decide who to vote for based on polls like this. Without a fancy statistical model or a degree in psephology, you’d just be guessing.”

“It shouldn’t take an expert to translate public opinion into seats. But the brutal truth is that in our system, votes don’t add up to representation, they get filtered, distorted and wasted along the way.

“With Reform UK on just over a quarter of the vote, they will probably get the most MPs, but who knows if that means they will be in government alone? Who knows how many seats the other parties will get. That’s not stability. That’s chaos wrapped up as tradition.”