A marriage of convenience?

Gwern Gwynfil

A political revolution is coming to Wales in May 2026. A new, larger Senedd with 96 members will add capacity, reflective of the responsibilities already devolved and in preparation for further devolution.

The structure of this new electoral system creates a near certainty of coalition, co-operation and multi party rule as a basis for any level of competent and effective government and governance.

The tired first past the post system, shown by the General Election in 2024 to be so obviously and demonstrably unfit for purpose, henceforth completely expunged from Senedd elections in Wales.

Complexities and Curiousities

This change to a much purer proportional voting system (one vote each and, broadly speaking, every vote counts) puts paid to ‘tactical’ voting. Why vote tactically when you can vote according to your conscience for the party you really want to see in power?

With six seats in each constituency ‘pot’ even the very smallest of parties have a realistic opportunity to secure one of the available Senedd seats.

There are still some quirks to the new Welsh system. We will still be using the calculations of the D’Hondt system to allocate seats within constituencies. For those who want to understand the basics here is an explainer.

With six seat constituencies, larger parties should be favoured by the system – there is an absolute threshold at around 14% of the vote which essentially guarantees a seat. In practice it is possible to secure a seat with less if vote shares fall the right way for a smaller party. Realistically, around 12% of the votes, in any given constituency, will almost certainly deliver the sixth of the six available seats.

To be absolutely clear, any party that gets a blanket distribution of votes across Wales at 12-15% of the vote will secure 12-16 seats for themselves in the Senedd.

This is only 3 in every 20 votes cast.

For those who like numbers rather than percentages: 1,293,041 people cast a vote for a political party in Wales in the General Election last year, a party securing 193,956 of those votes, reasonably evenly distributed across Wales, would have 16 seats in the Senedd. Roughly speaking, this is 12,000 votes per Senedd constituency if turnout in May 2026 matches last year’s election. On a lower turnout, one more consistent with historic levels for Senedd elections, 10,000 votes per constituency could deliver 16 members of the Senedd.

Consequences

Whilst it’s probably wise to let the implications of the numbers above sink in for those of you still reading, at risk of blowing your minds further I shall plough on!

Polling data for Wales consistently puts the combined vote share for the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Welsh Greens within a whisker of the magic 12-15% range that secures 12-16 seats. This result would almost certainly leave a Liberal Green Alliance in Wales holding the balance of power in a very divided Senedd. Not only would an alliance give them a realistic prospect of 8 Members of the Senedd each but also of being powerbrokers with the possibility of three or four seats in the new expanded Cabinet.

By working together both parties could ascend from being also-rans to being parties of government. Whilst this may seem wild and outlandish to some of you it is a story very clearly told in the data we hold.

This is an upside available only to a Liberal Green Alliance.

Gains for Reform and Welsh Conservatives in collaboration are marginal (and potentially they could lose out); gains for a Plaid Cymru/Green alliance would also be marginal; it is a similar story for any other combination because our system creates a ‘magic threshold’ of success which the other parties have already surpassed but from which the Welsh Greens and Welsh Liberals are impossibly distant when flying solo.

Maximum Benefits

There are plenty of other upsides to a Green/Liberal Alliance in Wales. More media coverage, becoming the news story for once rather than impossibly flailing for attention in an environment dominated by Nigel ‘Arthur Daley’ Farage and his becoated posturing. More activists on the ground in each constituency, working hand in hand to canvass, to change the narrative of these elections and to get out the vote. Two party leaders working jointly to cover more media opportunities.

Can they do it? Yes they can.

They have to get started though. Forging an agreement by the end of this Spring and orchestrating a rolling electoral campaign across the media and on the ground for a full year in the run up to the elections in May 2026.

Will they do it? Unlikely.

The pragmatic and purposeful pursuit of power will not sit comfortably with large parts of either party. Purists and ideologues in both will shudder at the thought of working together with their political ‘enemies’, notwithstanding the reality that they have incredibly similar manifestos and the vast majority of their activists in Wales would broadly agree on the vast majority of policy issues.

Collaboration and Coalition Set in Stone

The irony here is that every party must be prepared to govern hand in glove with others in the Welsh political system. Whilst it is theoretically possible for one party to gain an absolute majority in the Senedd the bar is implausibly high in the real world. This is not first past the post politics but messy bargaining and compromise politics. Why not get ahead of the game and work together now when the prize delivers power and a multitude more members of the Senedd?

Other countries with similar systems have long since adopted such alliance politics, especially amongst smaller parties – Spain, Italy and Portugal, all with similar electoral mathematics to those we’ll see in Wales next year, demonstrate the efficacy and importance of small party alliances. These are not new, in Spain Unidas Podemos first appeared in 2016, in Italy the Olive Tree was a dynamic and evolving electoral coalition of multiple parties over two decades, in Portugal Bloco de Esquerda has been around for a quarter of a century and Coligação Democrática Unitária have been in electoral coalition since 1987!

Make Change Happen? Only if you’re Brave and Bold enough

Stand firm 

If you’re a Welsh Green, if you’re a Welsh Liberal, if you truly want to have an impact in Welsh politics, if you want to stand firm against the rise of Reform UK in Wales, you will seize the opportunity and do whatever it takes to make this happen. Work together, compromise, stand shoulder to shoulder on the doorstep and then bask in the feeling of actual success come May 2026.

Most people go into politics and campaigning to change things. This is a golden opportunity for Welsh Liberals and Welsh Greens to change Welsh politics dramatically.

Shoulder to shoulder, the Green and Liberal response to the challenge of 2026 can be historic and monumental, in isolation it will be no more than the whimper of a footnote in history.

We shall see!