What most worries North Wales voters?

    
Its interesting to drill down a little into the small print of the latest YouGov Wales poll beyond just the voting intention figures.

Respondents were also asked to pick the three most important issues to them when deciding how to vote in the next election. Below you can see the issues selected by North Wales residents in comparison to those selected by All-Wales respondents:

The top three issues both in North Wales and nationally were the state of the economy, immigration and Health. Rather surprisingly considering Anglesey, Conwy and Denbighshire are amongst the three poorest counties in the  whole UK, North Wales respondents were comparatively more relaxed about the state of the economy than Wales as a whole. In fact with just 52% of the respondents selecting the economy in their Top Three, North Wales seems to be the most economically blasé region in Wales. Perhaps we in the North are just more used to a general crap economic state? Unemployment was the fourth most often cited concern - slightly contradictorily above the Wales average - but only to be expected after all the recent closures and job losses on Anglesey at least.

Another surprise was the fact that at 40% North Wales residents were the most worried about immigration in all of Wales. However with only 1% of North Wales respondents planning to vote for BNP - the equal lowest amount in Wales - concern about immigration does not seem to have been transferred to xenophobia.

Other notable differences between North Wales and the rest of the Nation was in relation to Health and Education. With much recent discussion about village schools being closed down in the North perhaps this is only to be expected.

For the rest of the issues North Wales was broadly in line with the rest of Wales.

Demographics of political support

The fine print of the YouGov poll also reveals the relative support for the main political parties amongst different age groups and social demographics.

Some particular points of interest (with thanks to Pete Whitehead at UK Polling Report) are:

• most of Plaid Cymru's support comes from the Young and the Old - Plaid seem to have no appeal at all to people aged between 35-54.
• the Tory share was higher amongst C2DE social groups than amongst ABC1s whilst Labour lead was almost the same in both categories. This may be a significant indicator come the election as Margaret Thatcher also famously commanded more support amongst C2DEs than ABC1s.
• Labour and Tory both scored higher amongst the C2DE group with the Lib Dems and Plaid doing better amongst ABC1s.  

  Lots of food for thought there.