(Title Image: Senedd Cymru)
With all of the regional list results now in, here’s a final tally of the Senedd election 2021.
Cliche time! The winner was apathy. Despite being a record turnout for a Senedd election at 46.6%, it’s still below 50% and I was pleasantly surprised it was as high as it was.
There were some areas where turnout was much higher than that, but there were typically low turnouts in parts of the north east and the Valleys. The queues were a bit of a mirage and more down to Covid restrictions than mass participation. Despite all the coverage of devolution over the last 18 months, it’s hardly been a campaign to get the heart pumping.
It’ll be interesting to see how many 16 and 17-year-olds voted, but my guess would be “not very many”.
The Big Three
I’ll be doing the usual detailed post-election examination over the next week or so (Labour, Conservatives, Plaid Cymru, The Rest), but what can we take immediately from the result?
I was expecting Labour to win most of the toss-up contests they were involved in, but in the end – except for Vale of Clwyd – describing them as “contests” would be misleading. Many seats that were marginal no longer are and Labour are back as a serious contender in places like Preseli Pembrokeshire and Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire.
The reasons why are worth a closer look in their own right, but it’s likely to be a mix of more effective on-the-ground campaigning (even with Covid restrictions), a greater proportion of Leave voters returning to Labour than expected, as well as the overall reaction to the Welsh Government’s handling of the pandemic/”rally around the flag” effect and a judgement of Mark Drakeford’s leadership compared to Boris Johnson.
If Labour wants to, a lot of things can now be put on the back burner because of this result: electoral reform and expansion of the Senedd (it wasn’t a strict Labour manifesto commitment and they won’t be strong-armed into doing it), the Newport bypass is properly dead; there’s no chance of an independence referendum this side of 2026 and probably not in the next term either (which may be a blessing in disguise for nationalists).
The Conservatives can point to gains thanks to the regional lists and have solidified their position as the main opposition party. Was it a “good election”? They were predicted 18 to 20 seats at one point and 16 is probably at the lower end of expectations despite being their best result, seats-wise, in a Senedd election. I’d say it was good but not great, but due to how the list system works even if they’d won more constituencies it might not necessarily have led to an overall increase in seat numbers.
Compared to the 2019 UK election, the Conservatives didn’t put in as much effort into so-called “Red Wall” seats. It seemed as though they were prioritising the regional lists which would explain odd decisions like last-minute candidate changes. There are also some seats where the Conservatives performed relatively poorly: Cardiff North, Vale of Glamorgan, Gower.
Will there be questions over Andrew RT Davies’ leadership? I doubt it. As there’s been such a high turnover of members, many of whom are wet behind the ears, there’s no obvious replacement so he’s relatively safe.
Last but not least, Plaid Cymru. Now that definitely needs a more detailed examination, but on the surface of it – and echoing something Dafydd Elis-Thomas said – geographically it was bad, but in raw vote share and alike there was little change from either 2011 or 2016.
They’ve stood still. Given the pressure Plaid put themselves under through their over-grasping list of policies and premature push for independence, it’ll feel like a more disappointing election result than it actually was. I said 13-16 seats was a realistic target and that’s what they did.
The loss of Leanne Wood is the only thing close to a shock result in the election. There were warning signs and I’m not the only person to have said the seat was under threat. The scale of the defeat was more shocking than the defeat itself.
There’ll be question marks over strategy and direction, no doubt – all worthy of further discussion. The overall gain in seats puts Adam Price’s leadership on firmer ground than it otherwise would have been.
The Rest
I have to start with the Lib Dems. Describing their electoral performances as “bad” or “terrible” has increasingly lost its effectiveness because they always seem to be able to do worse. It’s getting to the point where they have to think carefully about which constituencies they stand in (like the Greens) to avoid lost deposits. They ought to be relieved to just be there.
The Greens have a bit more to smile about and have seemingly learned lessons from previous elections by only running in the most favourable constituencies. They retained two deposits and came close to three more. Additionally, on the regional lists they out-performed Abolish the Assembly in some regions (which is a moral victory given their treatment by BBC Wales). There’s something to build on and as the Lib Dems decline, the Greens are slowly but surely catching up.
One of the biggest positives to come out of this for Welsh politics as a whole is the carpetbaggers are gone and some sort of sanity has been restored to proceedings. Although they’ll be taking large severance packages, Mark Reckless, Gareth Bennett and Neil Hamilton were humiliated along with other senior members of Abolish the Assembly, continuity UKIP and Reform UK (some of whom did really badly). The only “character” that comes out of it with any sort of political credibility is Abolish’s Richard Taylor having retained his deposit in Blaenau Gwent.
Even if they were united behind single candidates, they wouldn’t have performed anything close to what UKIP did in 2016.
There’s little to say about the other parties too. Gwlad performed poorly across the board; yes, you have to start somewhere, but you need to actually start. Neil McEvoy retained his deposit but to finish behind Plaid Cymru in Cardiff West by some distance is embarrassing (Plaid won’t care that much because Rhys ab Owen won a list seat); Propel didn’t do particularly well elsewhere either. I said neither of them would be a threat to Plaid and so it is. Mediocre.
The biggest surprise was the relatively strong performance by some of the Independent candidates, particularly in Islwyn, Bridgend, Neath and Blaenau Gwent.
As said, more on this in the coming days. The results of the Police & Crime Commissioner elections are also due tomorrow.
