Times are changing in Wales, but it does not seem like people are paying attention.
Times are changing in Wales, but it does not seem like people are paying attention. With the next Senedd election only a few weeks away, public interest in Welsh politics remains typically low. This has led us, two students from opposing sides of the political arena, to come together and write this piece. Jayden Hutchinson (Labour, Cardiff) and Max Norman (Conservative, Monmouthshire) are both in their second year at Bath, studying Politics with Economics. We hope that we may educate one or two students at Bath about the context, the parties, and the choice that Wales faces in May. 2026 is already being called “The most significant election in [Welsh] history”, and your voice really does matter, perhaps much more than ever before.
Two important changes are worth noting as a starting point. Firstly, the Senedd is getting bigger, growing from 60 members to 96. Secondly, these members will now be elected through a new system – Closed Party List Proportional Representation using the D’Hont Formula. Whilst sounding entirely baffling to many, this unwieldy name disguises a rather simple system, so we will explain what this means for you without splitting hairs on certain tedious details.
For this election, Wales has been split into 16 ‘mega constituencies. To help people understand how this change affects them, the Senedd has set up a tool to show you which constituency you will belong to. Instead of one single member being elected (as is the case in General Elections) each ‘mega constituency’ now elects six Members of the Senedd. Furthermore, your ballot paper will have changed – now you do not vote for which individuals you would like to see as an MS, instead, you vote for the party you align with. When ballots are counted, the party with the most votes (in a given constituency) will be given the first seat. A proportion of that party's votes are then taken away, to represent them being ‘spent’. This could result in another party now having the most votes, and so they are assigned the second seat. This process is repeated until all six seats are filled, and the hope is that this will make the Senedd more proportional – if you didn’t vote for the party that gained the first seat in your constituency, they may gain any of the five remaining seats. Furthermore, this system doesn’t encourage people to vote tactically for one of the two main parties, potentially giving smaller parties a boost.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Welsh politics feels more dynamic and changeable than ever before – parties that have spent decades in the background are sensing an opportunity. Traditionally, Wales has been firmly Labour since 1922, with Welsh Labour even being described as “the democratic world's most successful election-winning machine”. This success has allowed Labour to run the Welsh Government since it was established in 1999 – though their 27-year hold on power may now be about to come undone. The future will look vastly different under Plaid or Reform, who are the pollsters’ favourites to govern after May. The insurgent Green Party is also set to gain representation for the first time, and could lock Labour out of any role within an incoming Government. On the other hand, it seems that the Conservatives are facing an electoral drubbing – if the polls are to be believed.
Any party hoping to form the next Welsh Government would be faced with an onslaught of challenges after taking power. A recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown significant issues in education, with the share of 16–17-year-olds in full-time education below 2014 levels, as well as the share of 18-year-olds entering an undergraduate degree below 2016 levels. Furthermore, Welsh students miss more school and achieve lower PISA test scores than in England – and the gap is growing. There is a similar story in the NHS, where waiting times in the Wales are higher than both England and Scotland. Recent increases in funding and staff numbers have not helped, with hospital productivity down and waiting times worse than pre-pandemic levels.
While we do not mean to sound too bleak, it is important to note that there are also considerable structural issues within the Welsh economy. In the most recent Labour Force Survey, it was found 25.4% of people were economically inactive in Wales – a statistic which becomes only more sobering when compared to the UK-wide average of 20.7%. Wales currently has the highest proportion of over 65s in the UK, who by 2032 are projected to make up almost a quarter of the population. This creates even more difficulty for the Welsh government, with both economic inactivity and an ageing population resulting in fewer taxes collected and likely more paid out in benefits. As well as this, an older and less able population often necessitates greater social care spending. If the next Welsh Government wants to spend in other areas, these issues will have to be solved or mitigated, or Wales may be saddled with financial difficulties for a generation.
The state of the economy at large would be worrying enough, even if the Welsh Government was in a position take drastic action to remedy it – but the idiosyncrasies of the devolution settlement may make any dramatic changes politically unworkable. Primarily, it is the Welsh Government’s inability to raise much of its own cash that will be the major obstacle to parties’ agendas. The Welsh Government is dependent on ‘block grants’ from the UK government for much of its funding and only has limited powers to raise more funds through taxes. Similarly, Wales's ability to borrow is restricted to £1 billion for capital spending and £500 million as ‘headroom’ against tax revenue volatility.
Overall, the next government faces multifaceted pressures – public services that lag behind the rest of the UK, significant structural problems within the economy, and a lack of ability to raise the funds needed to solve them. Success in even some of these areas could be the making of any party’s time in the Senedd – but these problems cannot be ignored or solved quickly. Added to this is the challenge of meeting each party’s specific manifesto commitments, which they hope will define the next Senedd term as a distinct and transformative period of Welsh political history. Overall, parties can expect their Senedd term to be more of a balancing act than they may want to admit, with what they want to do often butting heads with what is actually feasible. Like it or not, ‘compromise’ may be the word that defines the next four years.
Turning our sights to potential results, we have seen the polls unify on a few key aspects of the election. Firstly, Plaid Cymru and Reform are in a straight fight for first place, with Labour behind in third, and the Greens and Tories fighting over fourth place. Reform’s rise to its current position follows the UK-wide trend, with Nigel Farage’s party currently polling highest among all the other parties, according to YouGov. Plaid Cymru has edged ahead of Reform in Wales, seemingly dropping their core aspiration of Welsh Independence to appeal to less radical voters fearful of Reform but losing faith in Labour. Both Reform and Plaid have already faced problems with their candidates, with each party seeing one contender resign mere days after being announced: the Reform candidate stepped down after a photo emerged of him performing a Nazi salute, while Plaid Cymru’s nominee stepped down when a Tweet containing a derogatory term for children was discovered.
On the defensive, Labour has sought to distance itself from Starmer’s unpopular Westminster Government by emphasising the ‘Red Welsh Way’ - a specifically Welsh strand of Labour politics. This strategy is a marked departure from rhetoric used in the lead-up to the 2024 General Election, when it was claimed Labour governments, working together ‘at both ends of the M4’ would be the best option for Wales. It is also worth reiterating that Labour has indeed been in power in the Senedd since 1999, so promises of change made by them have lost some of their edge. Indeed, if Labour’s manifesto priorities are so important, why have they not been accomplished by them in the past 27 years?
While never truly at home in Wales, the Conservative Party did win considerable victories in the late 2010’s, the crowning achievement of which was the 2019 General election (where Boris Johnson claimed his Brexit deal was ready enough to simply “Pop it in the popty-ping”). A surprising 14 seats were won, six of which were formerly Labour. However, the recent unpopularity of the party makes such a result look impossible now. One thing is certain – the Conservatives look to be losing a significant portion of their vote share, though pollsters seem to be unable to agree where this will leave it in terms of representation in the Senedd. The Green Party, riding a national wave of goodwill after its elevation of Zack Polanski and recent win in Gorton and Denton, continues to rise in the polls, though looking to be neck-and-neck with the Conservatives by May 7th. The Liberal Democrats are languishing in single digits, a far cry from their pre-WWI golden age, when Wales was considered home territory for the Liberal Party.
Of course, all polls differ from one another – the most recent YouGov poll placed Plaid Cymru in a 6-point lead, whereas More in Common show Plaid and Reform tied. There is also some disagreement on the scale of Labour’s collapse, with YouGov showing them on just 13% while More In Common and Beaufort Research predict a slightly more positive 20%. These differences do become important when looking at seat projections. Whether you use seat projectors from Cavendish, Wales Governance Centre or YouGov, one thing is clear – there is little to no way for Reform to lead the next government. Even if Reform does win the most seats, it is unlikely the Welsh Conservatives will win enough themselves to enable a coalition. There are also no other right-of-centre parties expected to win Senedd seats in May, essentially leaving Reform locked out of majority government unless they can uproot themselves from the mid-to-high 20s. Minority government may be an option for Reform, but one must only look at the difficulties Labour faced after the 2021 elections (where they held exactly one half of the Senedd) to see how this avenue could be fraught with difficulty.
It is also conceivable that Reform’s attempts to govern in minority could be frustrated by an unprecedented development in both Welsh and British politics: the establishment of a ‘cordon sanitaire’ grand coalition between Labour, Plaid Cymru and The Greens, with the express purpose of keeping Reform away from the levers of power. If formed, this coalition would likely be plagued with difficulty from the outset, with the competing visions of three rapidly diverging parties all vying for their plans for Wales to win out. One thing is clear – a divided Senedd, with no one party commanding a hefty number of MSs, will result in a deeply unstable Welsh Government, and an equally uncertain time for the people of Wales.
Plaid Cymru's results could turn out substantially more favourably than Reform’s. With Labour widely predicted to have seat numbers in the mid-teens, a return to Plaid-Labour coalition seems to be the most comfortable option – although the Labour leadership may feel slightly uneasy about being the junior partner. But if YouGov’s latest poll can be believed, we may see a particularly favourable swing towards Plaid Cymru, and there is a real possibility that they may not need Labour’s cooperation. This would pave the way for a Plaid-Green coalition, and yet another unprecedented moment in Welsh history – that of a firmly pro-independence Welsh Government. This would be a truly unexpected development, as the Green Party currently has no seats in the Senedd – it would take a particularly exceptional result for them to enter government having never been represented before. Of course, minority rule could be as much of an option for Plaid Cymru as for Reform – though without doubt it would herald a fraught and divisive time in the Senedd.
On May 7th, Welsh voters will face a democratic quandary. No matter your desired party, there will almost certainly need to be compromises made and deals struck down the road to ensure a stable government can be formed. Even then, the economic outlook is poor, and the Government’s own finances are constrained on all sides. The problems facing the next government come from every corner, and some cut to the heart of Wales's economic, social and political divides. Addressing all of these, whilst beholden to a Senedd of five rapidly diverging parties, is nigh impossible – the parties know this, and so should you. When you come to vote, you must bear in mind that a new party in Government means nothing without the policy and political will to make real changes. For many of us, though, choosing our next government is the best we can do. This election is more about setting Wales on the path we’d like to travel down, rather than choosing precisely what the destination should be – and it's up to you to make that choice.