UKIP’s collapse gives huge boost to CON in Wales. Now 10% ahead
The blues heads for top Welsh party for first time since 1850
The sheer scale of the disaster facing Corbyn’s Labour is brought home in the latest YouGov Welsh poll for Cardiff University and ITV. The figures are in the chart.
The Welsh academic and leading authority on Welsh politics, Prof Roger Scully, comments:
“Only one poll this century (in July 2009, at the very nadir of Gordon Brown’s fortunes as Prime Minister) has had Labour lower in Wales during this century. And I can find no precedent in any poll this century either for the Conservatives to be on 40% in Wales or for them to have a ten percentage point lead over Labour in general election voting intentions.
The huge leap in the Tory rating since our last poll has come mostly at the expense of UKIP.
The headline figures in our poll seem to reflect a direct move by many former UKIP supporters into the Conservative ranks: very nearly two-thirds of all our respondents who voted UKIP in the 2015 general election now say that they intend to support the Tories…”
Professor Scully has appeared on the PB/Polling Matters podcast and will be part of the panel at a Political Studies Association election briefing that I am attending in London tomorrow.
Quite what Labour does in the face of this impending disaster is hard to say. My strong view is that if another leader, Yvette Cooper perhaps, could be put in place then things might not be as bad as they appear at the moment.