A largely positive article about the Liberal Democrats by Jonathan Edwards for Nation Cymru points up an irony. We Lib Dems have become very good at first-past-the-post elections but rarely do so well in elections under more proportional systems:
However, in a Welsh context the strategy employed by the Liberal Democrats at UK level doesn’t work. Quite simply there are not enough Tory/Lib Dem marginals. In July it only yielded one seat in Wales where David Chadwick captured the new seat of Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe. With the Senedd election in mind, Jane Dodds and her team are going to have to be more creative.
The D’Hondt electoral system isn’t the easiest to decipher; however the Lib Dems are going to have to improve their poll ratings if they are to achieve the minimum threshold required for a seat in the new Senedd constituencies. Their success in England last July was based on clever targeting of constituencies, and their strategists need to employ similar informed decision making for 2026 as opposed to a blanket approach.
A complicating factor is that the 2026 Senedd elections will be fought on new constituency boundaries. If the Boundary Commission proposals are accepted, one seat will stretch from Corndon Hill, which is almost entirely surrounded by Shropshire, to the tip of the Lleyn peninsula. Meanwhile, what is essentially the old Brecon and Radnor seat has somehow acquired a coastline.
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