The inaugural election to the devolved National Assembly for Wales in May 1999 produced a sensational result, often described since as a ‘quiet earthquake’ in Welsh politics. Four years on, the second election saw a less dramatic, but still important outcome. In this article we review the background to the May 2003 election, analyse the results and examine detailed survey evidence about how 2003 differed from 1999 in terms of the factors shaping voting patterns and the overall outcome in Wales’ second devolved election.

The fifth election to the Welsh Assembly was held in May 2016. This article first outlines the political background to the election, before going on to assess the content and conduct of the election campaign. The results are then examined in detail: these show that while Labour's vote share fell considerably, it comfortably retained its position as the largest party in the Assembly. None of Labour's traditional rivals made significant ground, while United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) replaced the Liberal Democrats as the fourth party in the Assembly. Welsh Election Study data is then used to model the main factors shaping patterns of party support in the election. Modelling of vote choice in Wales in 2016 points to the continuing importance relevance of factors associated with 'valence politics' models, in particular leadership. Finally, the conclusion assesses the implications of the election for the future of party politics in Wales.

An increasing volume of research has suggested the efficacy of get-out-the-vote campaigns in the UK: having identified its potential supporters, a party then contacts them to encourage them to turn out on election day, and those contacted are more likely to reward the party by voting for it than are those not contacted. This article illustrates these findings with data from the 2011 Welsh Election Study. Each of the four main parties concentrated its attention on those who voted for it at the previous contest in 2007; those contacted – especially those contacted via media other than leaflets – were more likely to vote for the party again in 2011 than those who were not contacted.

In the 1975 referendum England provided the strongest support for European integration, with a much smaller margin for membership in Scotland and Northern Ireland. By 2015 the rank order of 'national' attitudes to European integration had reversed. Now, England is the UK's most eurosceptic nation and may vote 'Leave', while Scotland seems set to generate a clear margin for 'Remain'. The UK as a whole is a Brexit marginal. To understand the campaign, we need to make sense of the dynamics of public attitudes in each nation. We take an 'archaeological' approach to a limited evidence-base, to trace the development of attitudes to Europe in England since 1975. We find evidence of a link between English nationalism and euroscepticism. Whatever the result in 2016, contrasting outcomes in England and Scotland will exacerbate tensions in the UK's territorial constitution and could lead to the break-up of Britain.

In the immediate aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron raised the ‘English Question’ by advocating English Votes for English Laws in the House of Commons. This article explains why. It uses findings from the 2014 Future of England Survey of attitudes to constitutional issues in England. It reveals a group of interlinked concerns in England: about the advantages Scotland is perceived to have in the UK Union, about the absence of institutional recognition of England in the UK political system, and about the European Union and immigration. It shows that these concerns are distinctively English, held in a broadly uniform way across England and held most strongly by people in England who identify themselves as English, and not British. These concerns, and their linkage to and by English identity, differentiate the supporters of different political parties. They are held least strongly by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, and more strongly by Conservative and, especially, UKIP supporters. Cameron’s move on the English Question – and subsequent profiling of English issues in the 2015 UK general election – recognised a territorially distinctive electoral battleground in England on which the Conservatives are now competing with UKIP to articulate a new English nationalism, perhaps at the expense of the Conservative Party’s unionist heritage.

Welcome to The Conversation’s Manifesto Check, where academics subject each party’s election manifesto to unbiased, expert scrutiny. Here is what our experts had to say about the Plaid Cymru’s top policies. Follow the links for further analysis.

Wales has experienced the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government rather differently from the other nations of the UK. While the macro-economic consequences of the Coalition government's austerity agenda have largely been common, as a poor part of the UK with a high public-sector dependency, the economic cost of austerity on Wales has been heavier than average. Austerity has also had direct consequences — via the magical workings of the Barnett Formula — on the resources that Wales and the other devolved nations have available to use within areas of policy that are otherwise under their own control. Devolution, and the existence of a Welsh Assembly and Welsh Government, has meant that many flagship policies of the UK government have not been implemented in Wales. Major elements of the Coalition's domestic agenda, such as the reforms to schooling and the NHS, have concerned only England. However, with its devolution dispensation being rather more limited than that of both Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales has experienced the Coalition in a rather more 'full-on' manner than have the UK's other two minority nations.KeywordsVote ShareCoalition GovernmentPoll RatingCoalition PartnerEuropean ElectionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In line with the prevailing methodological nationalism of electoral studies, sub-state regional elections are often assumed to be shaped primarily by state-wide political dynamics. But such assumptions make it difficult to understand why, as occurred in Scotland and Wales in May 2011, simultaneous sub-state elections might produce sharply contrasting outcomes. Drawing on original data from the Scottish and Welsh Election Studies, this paper compares voting behaviour in these two elections. We test two main hypotheses: that the election outcomes differed because of the greater influence of UK-wide political dynamics in Wales than in Scotland; and that the differing election outcomes reflected simply the differing attractiveness of the main parties in the two nations. We find substantial support for the latter hypothesis, but also some support for the former: vote choice in the 2011 devolved elections was more distinctively Scottish than it was Welsh. The conclusion considers the implications of our findings for understanding devolved politics in Scotland and Wales, and sub-state elections in general.

This article presents findings from a new survey of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), conducted in 2010. It explains the purpose of the survey, its content, the survey methodology and the potential limitations of the sample obtained. The article then presents results from the survey to explore the determinants of MEPs' policy preferences and, more specifically, whether MEPs from recent enlargement states continue to differ from those of longer-standing EU Member States. The findings here indicate that 'enlargement' MEPs remain somewhat farther to the right, but are no longer more cautious about integration. The results also reinforce the importance of ideology, even more than nationality, as a factor underpinning MEPs' political attitudes.

Wales provides a notable exception to the contemporary academic consensus that electoral behaviour is best studied via choice-based approaches. In Wales, the orthodoxy remains that of the Three-Wales Model, an approach formulated in the 1980s which saw voting behaviour as defined by class, language and national identity. This article submits the Three-Wales Model to detailed scrutiny for the first time. The model is argued to have been constructed on a very narrow theoretical basis, and on flawed measurements. Most importantly, however, the Three-Wales Model is shown to have little empirical leverage on voting behaviour in Wales – either for the period when it was formulated or for more recent elections. Factors associated with ‘valence politics’ theories are shown to provide far greater insight into voting behaviour in contemporary Wales.