The votes were counted for the four Police & Crime Commissioner elections in Wales this afternoon. Here are the results.
That’s a result that should give Plaid Cymru something to be positive about.
It looks as though Dafydd Llywelyn did a bit better in some of the constituency first preference vote than Plaid did in the Senedd constituency results.
A candidate in one of these elections rarely manages to come back from behind to win in the second round, but given that you wouldn’t have expected Labour voters to give the Tories their second vote (if they used it at all) then Jon Burns would’ve needed a fairly big lead in the first round to hang on.
That’s not so great for Plaid. They were always up against it due to the increase in the Conservative vote in the region over the last few years, but they’ll be disappointed to have not made it into the second round at the very least.
The Conservatives were the clear beneficiaries from the lack of a UKIP candidate this time around, though a fair amount of votes went to Labour. This was probably the Conservative’s best chance of winning one of the Welsh PCC elections so not to do so will be disappointing.
Under first-past-the-post, the Tories would’ve won comfortably. Of course, this election uses a different method which meant that (predominantly Plaid Cymru) second preferences helped Andy Dunbobbin over the line in a mirror of Dyfed-Powys. Expect the Conservatives to hold this result up as an argument in favour of changing the PCC electoral system.
I don’t think there’s any real surprise that Jeff Cuthbert won here.
It seems all three of the candidates from the main parties lost votes to the Independent candidate. There’s still a belief amongst those who understand what PCCs actually do that the office should be apolitical and Independent candidates do tend to do well in these elections. Another thing of note is that Donna Cushing did a bit better than what Plaid Cymru achieved on the South Wales East regional list.
Given the surge in the Labour vote across the region in the Senedd election, the result wasn’t a surprise.
The Conservatives will be a little disappointed they didn’t push Alun Michael a bit closer given that, on paper, they had the perfect candidate. Did they put as much effort as they should have into the race? They created PCCs after all, but can’t seem to be that bothered about getting themselves elected to it. Overall, the PCC elections in Wales have been a big disappointment for them.
There was an improvement in the Plaid share of the vote and Nadine Marshall did roughly the same as what Plaid achieved on the South Wales West and South Wales Central regional lists. They narrowly missed out on making the second round in 2016, but they simply couldn’t keep up with the Tories this time around.
