Welsh Voting Patterns
This is a Guest Article by Ordovicius, who writes about anything and everything in Welsh Politics and beyond. I have republished it today, as the links were stripped in the version published yesterday .
Lack of a Welsh Psephology
In the run-up to the Assembly Elections last May, it became quite evident that Welsh politics suffers from a lack of opinion polls, and what surveys there are are far from being tailor-made for Wales, as Alwyn ap Huw pointed out at the time:
UK wide opinion polls are fairly accurate; they are conducted according to a scientific discipline called psephology. Psephologists look at the make up of an electoral community and poll people by selecting respondents who reflect that balance. They try to create a gender balance, age balance, education balance, social class balance, earnings balance etc. that is the same as the balance of the electorate.
Because of a lack of regular opinion polling in Wales there is no such thing as Welsh psephology. Wales is not a microcosm of the UK it is a completely different place, one needs different polling methods in Wales than those used in the UK to get an accurate picture of voting intentions.
So how do Welsh voters vote? Well in Wales the most important factors have been and remain a) location and b) sense of identity.
Welsh Voting Patterns
This is a Guest Article by Ordovicius, who writes about anything and everything in Welsh Politics and beyond. I have republished it today, as the links were stripped in the version published yesterday .
Lack of a Welsh Psephology
In the run-up to the Assembly Elections last May, it became quite evident that Welsh politics suffers from a lack of opinion polls, and what surveys there are are far from being tailor-made for Wales, as Alwyn ap Huw pointed out at the time:
UK wide opinion polls are fairly accurate; they are conducted according to a scientific discipline called psephology. Psephologists look at the make up of an electoral community and poll people by selecting respondents who reflect that balance. They try to create a gender balance, age balance, education balance, social class balance, earnings balance etc. that is the same as the balance of the electorate.
Because of a lack of regular opinion polling in Wales there is no such thing as Welsh psephology. Wales is not a microcosm of the UK it is a completely different place, one needs different polling methods in Wales than those used in the UK to get an accurate picture of voting intentions.
So how do Welsh voters vote? Well in Wales the most important factors have been and remain a) location and b) sense of identity.
