IN SPITE of a troubled Assembly election campaign, the failure of the National Executive to ratify any candidates as we move within three months of the elections and the resignation of a UKIP councillor in protest over the parachuting in of prominent UKIP members onto the regional lists, the party has increased their projected vote share to 18% according to a recent poll.
If this was replicated on voting day, it would lead to UKIP gaining nine regional Assembly seats – including two in mid and west Wales.
Support for Labour has slipped to 31%, which is around 10% lower than in the run-up to the 2011 elections, where the party gained 30 seats and formed a minority government.
The party is currently predicted to win 27 seats, of which two are regional, leaving them four seats short of a majority. However, support for both Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Conservatives appears to be unchanged, beyond the 1% margin of error, meaning that the parties look likely to win 10 and 12 seats respectively. This would mean that, if these figures were reflected on voting day, it would take a coalition of Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives, and UKIP to gain a working majority.
YouGov shows consistently higher levels of support for UKIP than other polls. At the last election it showed significantly higher shares of the vote for both Labour and UKIP than were actually returned in the election poll. However, surveys suggest that UKIP voters and Plaid Cymru voters are more likely to vote that Conservative, Liberal Democrat, and Labour voters.
It is unlikely that Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives would work in a coalition together. Leanne Wood, Adam Price and Helen Mary Jones – all of whom advised against the ‘rainbow coalition’ in 2007, are likely to be elected to the Assembly.
While the Welsh Conservatives have not yet announced their intentions regarding EU membership, leader Andrew RT Davies has said that there need to be an open discussion about the subject. This, allied with remarks he made at the Conservative Party conference last year in which he asked for England to ‘take Mark Reckless back’ would seem to indicate that a Conservative UKIP coalition would be unlikely.
Plaid Cymru are ideologically opposed to UKIP on several key points including EU membership. In addition, the party lost seats following a coalition with Labour. It is hard to see how a coalition with the Conservatives and UKIP would not cost them far more, especially as the party is the only one in Wales to call itself socialist.
A return to the 2007 One Wales coalition between Plaid Cymru and Labour has been predicted by some pundits. However, some campaigners during the 2015 General Election claimed that overt support given to Ed Milliband’s Labour government cost the party dearly on the doorstep. Andrew RT Davies has already begun to make political capital out of this, casting his party as the only alternative to a Welsh Labour-led administration.
It is hard to understand why UKIP has delayed in announcing candidates, when at least two south west Wales branches held local hustings before Christmas. UKIP are highly unlikely to win any constituency seats in the area, and the suspicion remains that, with the probable exception of Neil Hamilton in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, local party members will stand for the constituencies, while the more winnable regional seats will be contested by more high-profile candidates, such as Mr Reckless and UKIP press officer Alexandra Phillips.
The Herald asked UKIP for a statement regarding its candidates over two weeks ago. That request, addressed to Alexandra Philips as UKIP Wales’ Press Officer, was not favoured with either an acknowledgement or response,
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