‘Frustration’ after YouGov lumps Wales in with English midlands in latest devolution poll

YouGov has been criticised for lumping Wales with the English region of the Midlands in a devolution opinion poll.

Many people were frustrated that Wales, a devolved nation with its own parliament, was not treated as a country in its own right in a poll about devolution by the market research and data analytics firm.

This was despite the question – ‘Do you think devolution for Scotland and Wales has been a good or a bad thing for the UK?’ – being directly relevant to Wales.

The respondents were segmented into the regions London, Rest of South, Midlands Wales, North, and Scotland. There was no mention of Northern Ireland.

According to the poll 24 per cent of people in the Midlands and Wales think devolution has been a good thing for the UK, 35 per cent of people thought it has been a bad thing, and 17 per cent thought it has been neither.

 

‘Frustrating’

The poll was met with a hostile response with social media.

The consultant Tegid Roberts asked: “You asked Scotland but did you ask Wales?”

Jack Govier said: “They’re obviously not competent enough to split Wales from the Midlands.”

The academic Dafydd Trystan said: “@edward_greening ‪@brodawel @YouGov When GB is polled without a specific booster for Wales, the numbers reported for Wales are too small to have any level of reliability so different polling companies ‘lump’ Wales in with other parts of Great Britain … very frustrating.”

According to the poll 34 per cent of British people believe it has been a bad thing and 23 per cent believe it has been a good thing, whilst 16 per cent thought it was neither.

The results were markedly different in Scotland, where 58 per cent of people thought devolution had been a good thing, 20 per cent thought it has been a bad thing and 9 per cent thought it has been neither.

The poll was conducted on November 17, and 6729 GB adults were surveyed.