Assembly Lib-Con co-operation

In a few weeks the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election will take place. This is important not just because it is the first post GE test but also it will let us know how easy it is for the coalition parties to persuade their supporters to vote tactically for their coalition partner. Cameron has made it well known that he wants his supporters to tactically vote Lib Dem and the gossip on Conservative Home is that the support has not been their from Central Office for the Conservative campaign.

More than that a Tory minister has today in the Telegraph been talking about putting up joint "coalition" candidates at the next election.

So I thought it might be interesting to wonder what kind of agreements might be achieved in Wales at the Assembly election.

Firstly in Cardiff I have no doubt that any Tories in Cardiff central will head up to Cardiff north and all of the Lib efforts will be concentrated on Cardiff Central. This is just common sense.

The more interesting battle will be what happens in Powys. In terms of new seats the only possible gains for the Conservatives on current polling are Montgomeryshire and Brecon and Radnor (though the Vale of Glam might be interesting). Will Tory HQ allow the Welsh Conservatives to taget these seats? I'm certain that Glyn Davies will be doing all he can to help the Tories win in Montgomeryshire and with the antics of both Lembit and Mick there is a definite opportunity here. My guess is that the tactical Plaid and Labour votes will return home (instead of tactically voting Lib Dems) so this seat is really up for grabs.

Less obvious but more interesting is Brecon and Radnor.

2007 Result
Kirsty Williams (LD) 15,006 - 52.2%
Suzy Davies (Con) 9,652 - 33.6%
Neil Stone (Lab) 2,514 - 8.7%
Arwel Lloyd (PC) 1,576 - 5.5%

Despite the 20% majority I still think this seat is winnable for the Tories. The main reason for this is the fact that in 2007 the Tories won the regional vote (though I can't find the figures for this, if someone can confirm I'd appreciate it).

The truth is that the Libs in Brecon and Radnor have been very good at targeting PC and more importantly Labour voters to vote tactically for them. Traditionally this is a very strong seat for Labour, they came within 600 votes of winning the by-election in 1985, but Kirsty and Roger Williams have been able to persuade these voters to tactically switch. Places like Ystradgynlais will not be backing a "Con-Dem" candidate this time and I am very confident that the Labour candidate will get over 15% of the poll.

The question is, will Tory HQ allow a Tory candidate to unseat the Welsh Lib Dem Leader? My guess is that Clegg will ask a favour of Cameron and not a single penny will go from central office to the B&R campaign.

If anyone has any local info on how the Tories are fightin this seat it would be interesting.

Ipsos Mori regional monitor

Apologies that I missed this when it first came out. Ipsos have re-weighed all of their polls from June to November and then produced regional breakdowns of westminster voting intentions.

The Welsh result was (change from 2010 Westminster result)

Con 22% (-4%)
Lab 40% (+4%)
Lib 14% (-6%)
PC 16% (+5%)

It needs to be remembered that most of the polls in this were before Lib Dem support really hit the rocks in November but it gives a good idea of how quickly Labour recovered. It's unlikely we will see another Westminster election for a few years and when we do it should be on new boundaries so it is impossible to make any seat predictions until we get those new boundaries.

Yougov December Poll

Lib Dems must be panicking now with the latest yougov figures for them falling off a cliff.

Constituency December poll (change since November)

Lab 44% (nc)

PC 21% (nc)

Con 23% (+2)

Lib 6% (-3)

Other 6% (nc)

Regional December poll (change since November)

Lab 42% (+1)

PC 21% (+1)

Con 22% (+2)

Lib 5% (-4)

UKIP 5% (+1)

Put into our predictor this has Labour 30, Plaid 13, Tory 15, Lib Dems 2. Unfortunately the predictor does not treat UKIP as an equal party to the others so this will need editing. Also their are problems with using a uniform swing when a parties vote is so varied across a region. On these ratings the Libs will struggle to hold more than one seat (either Brecon and radnor or the M&W list seat).

To put into context how awful things are for Kirsty Williams only in 1 of the 5 regions (Mid and West) did the Lib Dems come 4th!

In South Wales Central they were 5th behind the greens. In the South East, north and south West they were 5th behind UKIP. To make matters even worse in the North they were level pegging with the Communists for 5th place (both on 3%).

All in all they are in an incredibly poor position. I have always thought that 6 seats was the floor that it was impossible for the Libs to drop beneath. This poll completely blows that theory away.

Of course this is only one poll but if this is anywhere close to reality the Lib Dems will need to run a truly amazing campaign next year.

They also asked their usual referendum question. The result is

Yes: 46% (-2)

No 25% (-5)

Don't know / won't vote 29% (+7)

This is still good news for the yes campaign.

Update: tables available here

2011 Assembly Referendum - BBC Wales / ICM Poll

The BBC today published an ICM Poll on a number of subjects including voting preference on further powers for the National Assembly for Wales Referendum due to be held in March 2011.

The headline figures are:

In favour of further powers: 57%
Against further powres: 24%
Don't know: 18%

They also asked a likelyhood to vote question and the figures based on those certain to vote are:

In favour of further powers: 77%
Against further powers: 23%

The BBC Wales report can be found here:

UPDATE

Here is the link to the full tables on ICM website.