Despite Local Elections in Wales, YouGov Still Has Tories Ahead There

I feel a little squeamish posting about polling in the UK as much as I do, given its weaknesses. Yet YouGov has ensured top billing again by insisting the Conservatives still have the lead in Wales (Roger Scully – Cardiff University):

Following the shock of our previous poll, which gave the Conservatives an unprecedented ten-point lead in Wales, our new poll once again asked people how they would vote in a general election for the House of Commons. These are the voting intention figures that our poll produced (with changes on the last Barometer poll, conducted in late April, in brackets):

Conservatives: 41% (+1)
Labour: 35% (+5)
Plaid Cymru: 11% (-2)
Liberal Democrats: 7% (-1)
UKIP: 4% (-2)
Others: 2% (-1)

The big change on our previous poll is clearly the recovery in Labour support. After doing exceptionally badly in the last poll, they have now pulled back within two percentage points of their Welsh vote share in the last general election. Yet Labour have not been able to eat into Conservative support at all. Although barely changed since our last poll, the Tories’ 41 percent is a new high for them in any Welsh opinion poll, ever.

I discussed the previous poll numbers here.

With these figures, the Conservatives would no longer expect a majority of Welsh seats. They would still get exactly half, though (20 of 40), a gain of 9 from 2015 and 4 ahead of Labour (who would lose 9).

That said, given how well Labour’s vote held up in local elections last week (as well as in 2016 Welsh Assembly elections), I still have a very hard time believing the Conservatives will elect more Welsh MPs than Labour. I’ll have to see it for myself on 8 June.

Then again, I wouldn’t believe that Wales would support leaving the EU – but we all saw it last June.