Comments

• J P 2 April 2014

  Why did Plaid’s vote drop so suddenly in May 2013, those two polls in April 2003, 31 and 26 at constituency poll, then it dropped to 21 at the election, why the big drop? Was there a reason for this?

  • Roger Scully 3 April 2014

    Mainly due to a very poor campaign, I think, JP; though I suspect the first poll could have been a bit of an outlier, flattering their level of support.

• J P 3 April 2014

  I see it is a problem the lack of Welsh polls, but without a WELSH media industry to fuel the polls you will not get the demand.

  Maybe as academics the emphasis should be on drawing the newspaper industry here.

  Also, how much notice do you take of these daily polls about the Westminster election, do they excite you? as the polls are so frequent for the upcoming general election, its a bit dull?

• Roger Scully 3 April 2014

  Well, I’m not sure I can do much about the slow death of the print media. However, in terms of polls we at the Wales Governance Centre have been able to institute more regular polling in Wales by collaborating with ITV-Wales. So we will have them at least quarterly now until May 2016. That’s not as regular as we would like, but it’s a great deal better than nothing.

  On the Westminster polls – yes, perhaps they are a little too frequent now. But I’d rather have too much information than too little; the former is not a problem we have here in Wales!

  • J P 3 April 2014

    We need more polls in Wales, maybe a poll just based on income tax and the lockstep. I can’t wait till pollsters try that out on the public. At least in Wales we can test out complicated polls. Maybe we are lucky in Wales. We had the GoW act 2006, LCOs, 1997 referendum on limited powers, 2011 legislative powers and a lockstep type income tax referendum!

    I bet the anoraks are whetting their appetite on this! Have you got any polling data for the 1997 referendum? that would be interesting?

    As with being a testing ground for banning e cigarettes! With are the testing ground for complicated referenda!

• Jason Morgan 7 April 2014

  Just a general comment: I’ve heard and read many, many times before that Welsh polls are notoriously poor at conveying voting intentions in Wales – I’m sure you have as well. This seems to be the general opinion on them as well. However it strikes me how, generally speaking, Welsh opinion polling seem to be as close to the mark as any. The only figures that seem to be off-ish are the Plaid Cymru figures just before the 2003 election, Labour pre-2011, and the Beaufort polls done for Plaid Cymru. Otherwise they look to be pretty reliable?

• Roger Scully 8 April 2014

  I think that’s right, Jason. The main problem with Welsh polls is – or at least has been in the past – that we don’t have enough of them.

  Thanks for your interest in the site.