The Draft Wales Bill: the Electoral Implications

Posted on 26 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

It was all fun and games in Wales last Tuesday, as the Draft Wales Bill was published by the UK Government. This putative piece of legislation has had quite a long gestation – a process that includes both the second Silk Commission report (published in spring 2014) and the cross-party talks that generated this spring’s
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Welsh feature from the Westminster Hour

Posted on 23 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

Last Sunday’s Westminster Hour show on Radio 4 had a feature on Welsh politics. There was a focus on Llanelli, with the two main candidates for the Assembly seat there (Lee Waters of Labour, and Helen Mary Jones for Plaid) heard several times. But there were also a few contributions from a certain Prof Scully
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Attitudes to the EU in Wales – an Update and Comparison

Posted on 19 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

One issue that we’ve returned to periodically on the blog over the last two and a bit years is attitudes to the European Union. There have been several reasons for this. There was an obvious topicality to this issue during the run-up to the May 2014 European Parliament elections. Then, after UKIP’s success in those
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The Electoral State of the Parties, 5: UKIP

Posted on 12 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

It is becoming increasingly difficult to recall that, until quite recently, UKIP had made minimal impact on electoral politics in Wales. Other than narrowly winning the last Welsh European Parliament seat in 2009, its electoral record here prior to the 2014 European election had been dismal. But 2014 saw it make a major advance –
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Yesterday’s local by-election

Posted on 8 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

We had a local council by-election here in Wales yesterday. (Quite why it was held on a Wednesday is not something I have yet been able to discover). I don’t normally cover individual local by-elections in any detail on the blog, although my end-of-the-year round up will, as per usual, try to put together the
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The Electoral State of the Parties, 4: the Liberal Democrats

Posted on 5 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

In my comments this time last year about the Liberal Democrats, I observed that “[t]he next year for the Liberal Democrats will certainly be difficult. It could be very bloody indeed”. Well, I wasn’t wrong there. In the build-up to the general election, I was a relative pessimist about the Lib-Dems’ chances compared to many
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The New Welsh Political Barometer Poll: Referendum Voting Intentions

Posted on 1 October 2015 by Professor Roger Awan-Scully

The latest Welsh Political Barometer produced, as we saw earlier in the week, some very interesting findings on voting intention and on the ratings of the party leaders. However, these were not the only findings of the poll. In addition, we have continued to ask questions about the two potential referendums facing Wales in the
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