The general election in Wales – behind the headlines

Mike Hedges – MS for Swansea East

The 2024 election saw the number of members of the Westminster Parliament decrease from 40 to 32. Labour won twenty-seven, Plaid Cymru 4 and the Liberal Democrats 1 with the Conservatives being wiped out in Wales.

This showed an increase from 2019 of 5 for Labour, no change for Plaid Cymru and one new Member for the Liberal Democrats and the loss of fourteen Conservative seats.

The opinion polls were wrong, something not discussed because they predicted the result, but the last opinion poll published before the general election overestimated the Labour vote by 3% in Wales.

Election Turnout which in 2017 was 69% in both England and Wales, in 2019 was 67% in both England and Wales varied this year with turnout 60% in England as opposed to 56% in Wales.

Worryingly for a democracy the number of people voting is reducing and the reduction at the 2024 election was faster in Wales.

The Labour vote went down in Wales by 3.9% to 37% in 2019 which was considered a very bad result described by some as the worst result since 1935.

In the UK, Labour’s vote share was down on the 41% achieved in 2017 but up on the 32.9% achieved in 2019.

Labour’s success in 2024 was based upon the Conservative vote dropping by 17.9% leaving them with 18.2% of the vote but still in second place on votes cast but not in seats.

The big change was the 11.5% increase in the reform vote from that of the Brexit party in 2019. There was also a small percentage increase in the vote for Plaid Cymru (4.9%), the Green party (3.7%) and the Liberal democrats (0.5%).

In only three seats in Industrial south Wales (Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, and Gower) did reform not come second. Having seen the advance of far-right parties in France, which was thankfully reversed last week, in Italy and in Germany. Why did we think Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom would be different?

For example, if we look at Llanelli and compare the 2019 and 2024 results albeit under different boundaries.

2024

Labour 12751
Reform 11247
Plaid Cymru 9511
Lib Dems 1254
Green 1106
Ukip 600

2019

Labour 16125
Conservatives 11455
Plaid Cymru 7048
Brexit 3605

With turnout dropping from 63.2% to 56.96% UKIP polled only 6269 in 2015 which was their previously highest vote, this is treating Reform as the successor to UKIP.

This was a poorer share of the vote for the Labour party than in 1931 and the worst result for Labour in Llanelli since 1918.

Social media has become more important at elections. What happened to quote Marianna Spring Disinformation and social media correspondent at the BBC: “It is worth saying that some of the political parties have had success at producing viral posts. Reform UK in particular has generated a huge amount of traction and conversation on social media.

“That is backed up by what I have found on both the feeds of my younger undercover voters, and in my conversations with real younger people. As well as being pushed left-leaning content connected to Labour and the Greens, some of their feeds have also been awash with posts from Reform UK.

“It is mainly young men who have told me about how their feeds were dominated by posts about Nigel Farage’s party.”

I also met during the election plenty of people who voted reform. These tended to be older voters, who have either paid off their mortgages outright or live in social housing, people who really disliked Rishi Sunak, but absolutely loathed Keir Starmer, who voted to leave the EU and think the government has failed on immigration and who like Farage.

Men who voted Leave were angry about the government’s immigration record, disliked Sunak and hated Starmer, and told pollsters they were going to vote Reform.

Women who voted Leave were angry about the government’s immigration record, disliked Sunak and hated Starmer, and told pollsters they did not know how they would vote.

There must have been voters who voted Labour in 2017, Conservative in 2019 and Reform in 2024. All three were elections after the EU referendum and the change in voting behaviour that caused.

We know three things; The electorate is extremely volatile. That less people are voting. That social media is the main means of contacting and convincing younger voters especially when messages are shared by friends.