Look @: South Wales East (Part III)

The post looks at the list seats for this region. To find the western constituencies click here and for the eastern constituencies click here.

The 2007 Regional List Result was as follows:

Party	Const. Seats	Region Votes	Region Votes %	Add. Members	Total Members
Labour	6	67998	35.8%	0	6
Conservatives	1	37935	20%	1	2
Plaid Cymru	0	25915	13.6%	2	2
Lib. Dems.	0	20947	11%	1	1
BNP	4.7%	Christian Party			1.3%
UKIP	4.6%	English Democrats			0.9%
Green	2.8%	Communist Party			0.5%
Independent	2.6%	Christian Peoples			0.3%
SLP	1.9%
Additional Members
1. Jocelyn Davies			3. William Graham
2. Michael German			4. Mohammad Asghar

The Most Likely Result…

It is difficult to predict exactly how the list vote will turn out, but we can have a guesstimate nonetheless! If we assume Labour hold all the seats they won in 2007 (including Caerphilly) and retake Blaenau Gwent they will have 7 constituency seats. We'll also say the Conservatives will hold the other constituency seat (Monmouth), leaving all the other parties empty handed at this stage. Then, the most solid way prediction of the list vote available, in my opinion, is to take a uniform swing from the last YouGov poll for the Welsh Election. If we do this the result would be:

Party	Const. Seats	U-Swing	Add. Members	Total Members
Labour	7	47%	0	7
Plaid Cymru	0	14%	2	2
Conservatives	1	19%	1	2
Lib. Dems.	0	7%	1	1
UKIP	0	5%	0	0

As you can see, despite the significant rise in Labour's vote, and the drop for the Liberal Democrats, there would be no change in the top-up allocation from 2007.

 

The Most Likely List AMs:

Under most plausible scenarios the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru will pick up one top-up seat apiece, so their #1 list candidates are shoo-ins. If Plaid fail to gain Caerphilly from Labour then Jocelyn Davies, who has been a AM since 1999, will take the first seat available on the regional list. William Graham secured the coveted spot for the Conservatives and he will serve his fourth term as a regional AM if all goes to plan. Whether Graham wins the first or the third top up seat will depend on other parties' fortunes, but he is virtually assured of his election.

Under the 'likely' result above the Liberal Democrats will take seat #3. In 2007 they won the second spot but their expected drop in vote share would see them slip behind the Conservatives. This is unlikely to worry the Liberal Democrats' top candidate Veronica German that much as she would win election to the seat she has been keeping warm since July last year. Veronica took over as an AM for South Wales East after her husband Mike, an ex-leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, was made a Lord shortly after the General Election. By virtue of being second on the 2007 List Veronica German replaced him.

The final seat would be allocated to Plaid Cymru, and their #2 candidate on this regional list is the leader of the Caerphilly Council Lindsay Whittle. Whittle was the party's candidate for the Caerphilly seat in the 2007 Assembly election and the 2010 General Election, but he has moved to the List to allow Ron Davies to contest his constituency. Whittle and German's elections are by no means assured as there are a few different scenarios which would change the seat allocation…

 

Other Scenarios/Possible AMs:

If we keep the regional vote shares from the Uniform swing above, but allocate Caerphilly to Plaid Cymru the Total Members column would remain unchanged. The regional list AMs would be shaken up quite a bit though! In this scenario the #1 list candidate for the Tories (William Graham), the Lib Dems (Veronica Graham) and Plaid (Jocelyn Davies) would be elected in that order. The fourth seat would then switch to Labour. So, if Ron Davies wins in Caerphilly then Lindsay Whittle could miss out on the fourth list seat! Under this scenario the Newport Councillor Debbie Wilcox will become the 7^th Labour AM in this region, just ahead of the Conservative's #2 candidate.

Now for the fun bit…

In the YouGov polls for the Welsh Assembly there have been consistent differences between the uniform national swing, taken from the headline figures, and the subset for the South Wales East Region. Labour have over performed UNS in this region whilst the Liberal Democrats have underperformed. In fact, UKIP were ahead of the Lib Dems in both the November and December polls. The Conservative and Plaid Cymru figures have been more volatile but the Welsh nationalists have been ahead of the Tories in two surveys, which suggests that they could close the 6 point gap from 2007. The big caveat for regional subsets is that they are small, un-weighted samples, but they do offer us a useful pointer towards some potential scenarios.

If the Liberal Democrats poll the 7% suggested using uniform swing they would be very close to the effective threshold to gain a regional seat. If they drop any lower than that then they would lose their regional seat. If the top three parties' vote remain in keeping with the uniform swing that seat would then go to the Conservatives. This scenario would see Mohammad Asghar win a second term as a South Wales East AM, albeit with a different party to the one he was first elected with. Asghar won seat #4 in 2007 as a Plaid Cymru candidate but he subsequently defected to the Tories two years later. Asghar's selection as their #2 candidate for the regional list was a controversial one with claims that the local party were encouraged
to adopt the Asian candidate to help the party's image.

Regardless of how true the rumours are, Asghar is in a very vulnerable position. If the gap between the Conservatives and Plaid is closer than uniform swing would suggest then the Liberal Democrats can take the fourth seat with as little as 6% of the vote. Labour could even win this last list seat if their vote pushes 50%, which it has done in each of the last three regional subsets.

UKIP have been talking up their chances of getting a top-up seat in this region and they certainly have a chance on the current polling evidence. If they beat the Liberal Democrats into forth place with around 7/8% of the vote then UKIP's #1 candidate* would win a seat in any of the above scenarios where Veronica Graham is elected. As easy as that sounds the reality is a little difficult. It would require the anti-EU party to almost double their 2007 whilst the Liberal Democrats lose half their voters, and this swing would have to be direct from one party to the other. Although the latter has been shown in some of the polling this has probably been influenced by the Tuition Fee rise. The Lib Dems have risen a few points in UK polling recently and a modest recovery would make it extremely difficult for UKIP to overtake them here.

If Plaid gain Caerphilly then we can tinker the list vote to produce more permutations, although going through all of them is probably unnecessary. They generally involve a combination of the candidates already mentioned becoming AMs, depending on which party out performs the uniform swing. If the Lib Dems drop below 7% then the Tories would pick up their seat, although if UKIP can reach the threshold by taking votes from the Tories they would take it. Plaid would need a big rise in their Regional vote share to get a second list seat if they win a constituency.

This change in the constituency allocation does have the potential to bring one more candidate into the mix. If Labour poll 50% on the list vote but lost Caerphilly then their #2 candidate Anthony Hunt, who is an aide to the Torfaen MP Paul Murphy, would become an AM. However, I'd suggest the chances of Labour enjoying a 14%+ swing on the list vote yet also losing a constituency seat is fairly unlikely.

So, After All That…

…the regional vote will probably reproduce the same allocation of the list seats that it did in 2007. Liberal Democrats are likely to be at their polling trough at the moment, and any movement back towards their last election vote share vastly increases their chances of holding their seat. If Labour hold Caerphilly, and the Lib Dem vote doesn't collapse, they are unlikely to pick up a list seat. Similarly, if Plaid do not win a constituency seat then, as their vote share appears to be holding steady, they are likely to pick up two list seats. Therefore the only personnel change from right now will probably be Lindsay Whittle (PC) replacing Mohammad Asghar (CON).

 

* I haven't seen anything to suggest UKIP have selected their list candidates. If anyone knows any different then please get in touch! Even a date for selection (if it hasn't happened yet) would be welcomed :-)