(UPDATED) Could Welsh Labour be about to experience a near wipe-out similar to that which Scottish Labour saw at GE2015?
A new Welsh Political Barometer poll by @YouGov will be published tomorrow by @ITVWales
The results go well beyond ‘gosh’ territory, or even ‘blimey’: by some way the most dramatic poll I have ever analysed.
And in some respects a genuinely historic poll for Welsh politics.
— Roger Awan-Scully (@roger_scully) July 28, 2019
It is not often that all eyes are on Welsh politics but yesterday’s Tweet from the respected Professor Roger Scully of Cardiff University has really set things going.
We don’t get very much Wales only polling but what there is generally associated with Professor Scully. And for him to be trailing his survey for ITV in this way suggests a sensation.
His tweet reminds me of a similar one from Ben Page of Ipsos-MORI in late 2014 relating to a poll that his firm had produced for STV. There was a similar big build up and then the numbers can and which point pointed to the total collapse of Labour in Scotland. This is, of course, what happened six months later at GE2015. LAB moved from holding 41 of Scotland’s 59 seats to just a single MP.
We know from Wales only polling over the past nine months that Labour’s once invincible position in the Principality is on the decline. Last December Survation had Corbyn’s party in 47% with Scully’s YouGov poll at 43%. In May that was down 25% with the Brexit party just two behind.
At GE2017 Labour won 28 of the 40 Welsh seats. If that number is substantially reduced and there is still no recovery for the party in Scotland then it is very difficult to see how LAB can win most seats overall in a UK general election.
We wait in anticipation for Professor Scully’s new poll. Hopefully it will be out by late morning.
Updated – the poll is now out
Thus LAB drops to its lowest ever level in Wales with the Tories up 7 to take the lead and the LDs up 4. The Brexit party’s down 5 Plaid up 2