Just a bit of fun

As my regular reader will know, I treat opinion polls with scepticism. I am with the late Paddy Ashdown: the only poll that counts is actual ballots in actual ballot boxes. However, it seems that the staff of political parties do take them seriously and of course the press find opinion surveys a cheap alternative to real news. So Welsh Labour must be worried by Cardiff University's survey published at the end of last month. This shows Plaid Cymru with a clear lead in both constituency and regional list voting.

The bastardised version of Scotland's electoral system insisted upon by Labour at the time of devolution gives an undue advantage to the strongest party. This is because the element of top-up from the regional lists is not enough to compensate for the bias of first-past-the-post constituency polls. (In Scotland, of course, the balance was more carefully calculated.)  One can see why Labour was so happy with the electoral settlement. The party had been dominant in Wales for as long as their apparatchiks could remember or could foresee. There was no way the Tories, the traditional enemy in Westminster, could mount a serious challenge.

Now they are faced with the possibility of a challenge from a quarter unexpected in 1997. Could Welsh Labour find itself on the wrong end of a skewed electoral system as we Liberal Democrats and, dare I say it, Conservatives have for nearly a score of years? Perhaps it will jolt them into moving on the electoral proposals of the Richard Commission, namely electing all AMs on the same basis under a fair voting system.