Below is the Druid's North Wales Poll Tracker incorporating the latest ITV Wales/YouGov survey:
click to enlarge
As has been widely reported in the press, Labour's Welsh surge is also clearly visible in North Wales with apparently 45% of N.Wales constituency voters now backing Labour - the highest figure by some margin since the Druid started this tracker. In contrast both Tory and LibDem support has fallen, with Plaid Cymru picking up somewhat.
Frankly I think this poll is clearly an outlier, and the reason is this: according to the very same poll, 47% of people in North Wales think that either George Osborne's budget cuts are "about right" or "have not gone far enough" - the highest regional support figures of any region in Wales. Similarly, the percentage of people opposed, who think Osborne has "gone too far in trying to reduce the deficit", is just 39% - considerable below the all Wales average of 43%. Accordingly its not clear why Labour's support should have leapt over 10 points in North Wales since the general election. I fully expect to see Labour's support fall back closer to 35% in the next poll.
Regarding the question of giving the National Assembly increased law-making powers, YouGov finds that North Wales voters are the most sceptical in Wales with 35% planning to vote 'no' - compared to the all-Wales average of just 28%. Furthermore, with only 48% of N.Wales voters planning to vote 'yes', this is the second lowest support figure in Wales. This is very surprising when you consider that the BBC "Wales Devolution" poll carried out in March this year actually found that North Wales residents are much more pro-Assembly and anti-Westminster than any other part of Wales. There is clearly something wrong with either or both of these polls as both results cannot be true.
You can find the raw data for the YouGov poll here.
6 comments:
Ahem - we've been here before.
There's little or no point extrapolating from small sub sets of data which have a margin for error of +/- 7%.
In general Labour probably will increase their strength all over Wales over the next few years. It's an unfortunate fact of Welsh political life that Labour builds support in Wales when the Tories are in power in London.
Remember also that "north Wales" refers to the larger NHS region in the ICM/BBC poll and the smaller Assembly region in the YouGov/ITV poll.
Dwyfor Meirionydd is in one but not the other.
Labour supporters have no faith in their own party and prospective new leader, all we want is to be heard and not ignored, Labour have spawned a new generation of extemist parties, and why not, our main parties ignore us, so we have to learn to defend and look after ourselves.
"47% of people in North Wales think that either George Osborne's budget cuts are "about right" or "have not gone far enough" "
It'll be interesting to see how that statistic changes as people begin to lose real jobs and suffer real service cuts...
a good point well made
An interseting suggestion would be for the utilities that provide most of the funding to the treasury in London, were to be taken back, back to the people of Wales, I'm talking about land that was stolen and flooded to provide Water for the cities of England.
We want the land back, go somewhere else for your Water, or better still, pay us a proper rate for it, dwr Cymru i bobol Cymru.
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