After the Polls: how did everyone do?

The dust is still very much in the process of settling following Polling Day: there’s a new government to be formed in Wales, the Scottish Government has to test its support in front of the new Session of the Parliament, Councils across England will be getting down to business and in many cases trying to build coherent administrations, and the political parties will be digesting the results. That process will be easier for some parties than others.

A very new look Senedd

With new boundaries and a new voting system, the Senedd elected this week was always going to look very different to any of its predecessors (that it’s 60% bigger emphasises that). But the voters redrew the entire Welsh political landscape and it’s broadly in line with what the Caerphilly By-Election prophesied.

Plaid finish with 43 seats

Plaid outperformed their polls (Find Out Now came the closest to nailing their vote share) and ended up with 43 seats — more than I thought. They’re still six short of a majority and their closest prospective allies, the Greens, only won two, but Rhun ap Iorwerth will almost certainly be First Minister in a few days.

Reform outperformed their polls too, but it was far closer, and YouGov called their vote share the closest. 34 seats is a decent haul, but given how far that puts them behind Plaid, there might be a modest cause for disappointment, particularly as even if they got the Tories on board, their combined total wouldn’t surpass Plaid. Still, it remains to be seen if the new Opposition in the Senedd will prove to be more cohesive than the UKIP group which was elected in 2016 and started fragmenting almost on arrival.

By contrast, what polls projected would be a bad day for Labour turned out to be even worse: YouGov came closest to their share of the vote (only Find Out Now underestimated it) and the party that has been in government since devolution began in Wales was reduced to single figures. As I predicted, the First Minister Eluned Morgan was one of the many Labour MSs on the wrong end of the drubbing, and outgoing Transport Secretary Ken Skates takes interim charge of the shellshocked party.

The Tories’ poll rating was more or less bob on, though my model had them winning eight seats as opposed to the seven they ended up with. Yma o Hyd isn’t a sentiment normally associated with the Tories (the song includes a hostile reference to Thatcher, after all), but I think that’s where the Tories are at. No one’s talking about them very much, which is probably for the best.

Had you offered the Greens fifth place, entry into the Senedd for the first time and a seat in each of the Cardiff constituencies six months ago, I suspect they’d have bitten your hand off. But it seemed like momentum slipped away from them in the last week or so, and the party ended up underperforming against their polling. But with a becalmed Labour group, Green support could make the difference between Plaid’s proposals passing or not passing, and if their two MSs play their cards like their Scottish counterparts, what they’ve secured this week is a crucial foothold ahead of the next election in 2030 (the Senedd is reverting to four-year terms).

As for the LibDems, one seat is more than they would have expected on the notional boundaries. They (marginally) underperformed against their polling too, but if Jane Dodds can avoid sniffing, “Nationalists!” at everything Plaid do and actually engage with them from time to time (something Alex Cole-Hamilton has been adept at doing in Scotland despite it being obvious that he’d much rather work with Labour), LibDem leaflets could be full of achievements to boast about in four years’ time.

Holyrood: the same but very different

In what was described by pundits as the ‘meh’ election (though turnout was still the second highest of the devolution era), the voters delivered something that was far more interesting than expected, and while we all thought that constitutional wrangling would be the continued order of the day, the result has thrown up procedural questions that the Parliamentary Bureau will have to resolve swiftly: a tie for second place. While the term “Leader of the Opposition” is strictly unofficial at Holyrood, there’ll still be questions over who goes first at First Minister’s Questions, who sits where in the seating plan, and who gets the nicer offices, among other things.

The SNP are the largest party by some distance, but not as large as they’d hoped

Anyway. Firstly, there’s the SNP performance, where the party did slightly better than the polls projected in terms of Constituency Votes (though ended up with fewer constituencies), but slightly poorer than projected in terms of Regional Votes (but ended up with a Regional seat in the Highlands & Islands). A likely fifth term in government is no mean feat, particularly given the shellacking the party got in 2024, but the warning signs are there: the loss of a Cabinet Secretary in Edinburgh Central to the Greens is bad enough, but that coupled with several losses to the LibDems (and also to Labour in Na h-Eileanan an Iar, where the Government’s struggles with ferries almost certainly did for them), shows that the once formidable campaigning machine can now be out-organised, at least in patches. Worse, John Swinney faces a double electoral test sooner rather than later: the election of Stephen Flynn in Aberdeen Deeside & North Kincardine and Stephen Gethins in Dundee City West obliges them to stand down from their seats at Westminster (Aberdeen South and Arbroath & Broughty Ferry respectively) within seven weeks. But there is one ray of light: Hannah Goodlad’s win in the Shetland Islands shows what an innovative, energetic campaign can accomplish.

I’m plumping for Reform next as they outpolled Labour on the Regional Vote. They underperformed slightly against their polling, particularly given the last few polls which saw them pulling ahead of Labour. Still, they are there, they’re in contention to be the largest opposition group, and Malcolm Offord has been ratified as the group’s leader, so they can’t complain too much. And while insistence that Scotland rejects Reform looks shakier than it did, they’re still markedly less popular in Scotland than in England or Wales.

As for Labour, they might have got away with this performance had Anas Sarwar not been telling anyone who would listen that he had a chance of becoming First Minister, to the point that he had to publicly concede the election after only a handful of results. They ended up slightly outperforming their Constituency Vote polling, and their 16% of the Regional Vote is roughly where they were polling, and 17 seats is more than the 16 I was expecting. But the 2024 electoral performance clearly shaped the long-term strategy, and the post-2024 performance of the UK Government (underscored by Anas Sarwar calling for Keir Starmer to resign) blew that out of the water: the focus on the Constituencies was misplaced, as Sarwar was one of the only party leaders not to even mention the Regional Vote, or the PEACH BALLOT, as Russell Findlay and Alex Cole-Hamilton would describe it. There are questions within the party regarding the strategy and Sarwar and his deputy Jackie Baillie (who by the end of this Session will, all being well, have been representing Dumbarton for 32 years) are under scrutiny, but the spotlight being on Downing Street keeps it off the Leadership in Scotland for now.

The Greens, meanwhile, had a good day: their first constituencies and a record haul of seats. 2.3% isn’t a bad Constituency Vote share given that they only stood in six constituencies (and one of those was the Shetland Islands, with its far smaller than average electorate), 14% is a fair reflection of where they were polling and 15 seats is a decent return for that support: it could even have been one more were it not for far-right spoiler party Independent Green Voice apparently siphoning off votes.

As for the Tories, losing more than half their MSP group should be a disaster, but 11.8% on each ballot is slightly higher than the polls predicted and defence of all but one of their constituencies (Jackson Carlaw being the unlucky one in Eastwood). Besides, staying in double figures is better than I expected for them. Again, no one seems to be talking about Russell Findlay’s leadership for the time being.

The LibDems can be happy with their result too: they outperformed their polling on the Constituency Vote and weren’t too far off their Regional Vote polling. Skilful constituency targeting has netted them a second constituency in Edinburgh (the first time they’ve managed that since the 2011 wipeout), two constituencies in the Highlands (and coming second ahead of sitting MSP and independent candidate Fergus Ewing in Inverness & Nairn) and finally aligning strong local performances for Westminster and local elections for a win in Strathkelvin & Bearsden. That skill eluded them in the Shetland Islands, where their choice of candidate — the Leader of a very unpopular local council — clearly backfired, leading to the islands’ first non-Liberal parliamentarian since the 1950s. Look after your backyard.

English local elections: are Labour about to press the panic button?

Now we come to an array of First Past the Post Contests, some of all-out elections, some for a third of Councillors, and some, just to be awkward, of halves. A chaotic landscape has, inevitably, produced a chaotic result, so let’s see what we can say, using the BBC’s Projected National Share as an indicator.

Starting with Reform, two different things can be true. It’s true that they won the most seats, that they were doing so from a largely standing start (many gains came in areas that didn’t hold elections last year, including those areas where County Council elections were postponed), and that they control 14 new councils. It’s also true that their PNS has fallen compared with last year. So they’ve both advanced and stalled at the same time, and they didn’t do as well as I expected: their PNS is down slightly against Westminster opinion polls (but within the margin of error) and they won fewer Councils than I imagined. That said, we forget that last year’s results was the start of their sustained poll leads, not a reflection of them: people saw their wins, figured it was worth voting Reform, and expressed an intention accordingly. I’d imagine that these results will once again kickstart their momentum to a degree, and we’ll probably see Reform leads widen again for a few months.

Next came the Greens on 18%: while the party ended up fifth in terms of Councillors, the PNS was calculated at 18%, up seven points on last year, and an overperformance against their polling. First Past the Post hasn’t been kind to them though: control of five councils is less than I was anticipating, though the party will be pleased with its first elected mayors in Hackney and Lewisham. Could a “Metro” Mayoralty be on the way? The two contests earmarked for next year, in Cheshire & Warrington and Cumbria, don’t look like obvious targets, but 2028 might yield some good results, especially with the move back to Supplementary Vote on the cards.

Labour and the Tories are neck and neck on 17%, but Labour ended up with more seats, even if they won less than half the seats they were defending. That 17% was down on last year and less than their Westminster poll average, and the losses they incurred in terms of council control were even heavier than I expected. There are far more hung councils in the capital than I anticipated, so it’s little wonder that the leadership frenzy is now getting underway.

As for the Tories, they lost around half the seats they were defending and underperformed their Westminster VI average (though by less than Labour) and made a bigger net loss than I thought they would. But their PNS was up on last year, so I guess the party was expecting worse than they got. Besides, with all eyes on Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch can just keep her head down for now.

Finally, the LibDems: given that they’ve been largely squeezed out the national conversation of late, it’s perhaps no surprise that their PNS of 16% was a slight drop on last year, but it was also the biggest overperformance versus polling of the night. They can be happy, all in all.

So what now? All eyes on how the Parliamentary Labour Party responds to events.