Labour vote share to decline?

BBC Cymru-Wales have this week published findings from a new poll, conducted by ICM soon after the European elections. The poll covered a number of areas, including attitudes to the policy achievements of devolution, and awareness of devolution, which I looked at earlier this week. Now let’s focus on the poll’s findings on voting intentions for the National Assembly.

ICM asked about voting intentions for both the constituency and list vote; this is the first poll to ask about these to be conducted by a company other than YouGov since the 2011 Assembly election. Before discussing these results, though, a few cautionary words about comparing them with those from YouGov. The BBC/ICM poll used the exact question wording on voting intention used by YouGov since December 2013. We don’t, therefore have concerns about different question wordings causing different results. However, we should recall that the February BBC/ICM poll, which asked about general election voting intentions in Wales, produced a lower figure for Labour support than any YouGov poll that has been conducted the 2010 general election. It also produced an unusually high Plaid Cymru figure.

We may want to bear that in mind when looking at the figures below. This is not an implied slur on either ICM or YouGov; both are, quite deservedly, internationally-respected survey companies. (The Political Betting website habitually refers to ICM as the ‘Gold Standard’ of pollsters, while among YouGov’s many achievements was estimating the recent European election results in Britain closer than any other polling company). My point is simply that the different methods used to conduct the surveys (the ICM polls have been conducted by phone, while YouGov’s use the internet) and weight the data seem to be generating small but distinct differences in the results produced: ICM have Labour support a little lower, and that for Plaid Cymru a little higher, than do YouGov. It is therefore sensible to take this into account when analysing ICM’s new findings alongside those from recent YouGov polls. We are not quite comparing like with like.

The basic figures on voting intention are as follows:

	Constituency Vote	List Vote
Labour	36%	38%
Conservatives	19%	21%
LibDems	5%	4%
Plaid Cymru	24%	22%
UKIP	13%	10%
Others	4%	4%

Translated into a national result, and assuming uniform national swings (with all the usual health warning applied to that assumption), this would produce the following result in an Assembly election (with changes from the seat totals won in May 2011 in brackets):

	Constituency	List	Total
Labour	26 (-2)	2	28 (-2)
Conservatives	4 (-2)	7 (-1)	11 (-3)
LibDems	2 (+1)	0 (-4)	2 (-3)
Plaid Cymru	8 (+3)	6	14 (+3)
UKIP	0	5 (+5)	5

The constituency seats to change hands would be: Aberconwy and Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire (gained by Plaid Cymru from the Conservatives), Llanelli (gained by Plaid Cymru from Labour), and Cardiff Central (gained by the Liberal Democrats from Labour).

Even with the qualifications mentioned above about comparing this poll with those conducted by YouGov, ICM’s findings are broadly consistent with the trend over recent YouGov polls for Labour’s support on the constituency vote to be slipping below the levels enjoyed through 2011-13. ICM’s findings are also consistent with the modest upwards trend in Plaid Cymru constituency vote support found in recent YouGov polls; nonetheless, this is Plaid Cymru’s highest Assembly constituency vote score since October 2009.

Looking at the other parties, UKIP continue to perform quite strongly. That said, this was not an outstandingly good poll for them by recent standards; frankly, I was actually expecting a post-European election ‘bounce’ to lift them a little higher than this, especially on the list vote. The Liberal Democrats’ ratings continue to be awful; those for the Conservatives to be steady and resilient at a decent, if not outstanding, level of support.

One slightly surprising feature of the results is that Labour’s vote share is higher on the list ballot than in the constituency one. Labour have always won a higher vote share on the constituency vote than the list in the Assembly elections, while the last poll to put their list vote share as the higher one was an NOP poll conducted in April 2007. This may simply be one of those occasional, one-off findings that polls can produce, although we won’t know this for sure until we have more such ICM polls in Wales.

If we up-date our figures on the average constituency vote scores for each party for the last three years, these ICM findings – as indicated above – strengthen the trends that were already observable for Labour support to be declining, and that for Plaid Cymru and UKIP to be rising.

	2012	2013	2014 (so far)
Labour	48.5	45.0	39.5
Conservatives	19.25	19.7	20.25
Plaid Cymru	17.25	18.0	20.5
LibDems	7	9	7.5
UKIP	–	6.0	8.75

Whether these trends will continue, of course, is another matter. For now I’d just like to thank the BBC and ICM for adding some further information to our understanding of where the parties in Wales currently stand.