Jac Larner

There's not much political & social science can point to and say 'we know almost certainly that this will happen', but accommodating the far-right and subsequently losing is one of them.

Women in Wales are being jailed more often Research has been carried out by a team at Cardiff University

NEWYDD - Adroddiad gan @robdjones.bsky.social yn dadansoddi'r data diweddaraf ar garchardai a charchariad yng Nghymru 👇

NEW - Report from Dr Robert Jones analyses the latest data on prisons and imprisonment in Wales 👇 #Wales #Cymru #Senedd26
www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-n...

Paper is a collab effort w/ awesome @scotvoting.bsky.social team; @robjohns75.bsky.social @frasmcm.bsky.social @ailsahenderson.bsky.social & @cjcarman.bsky.social . Thanks also to UK and Scot Govs for providing high profile scandals while we were able to collect data

🚨 NEW in @bjpols.bsky.social : When Partygate hit Westminster, trust in Scottish politicians increased. Our experiments reveal a "contrast effect" - scandals at one level can make the other look better by comparison. Who lost most trust in Westminster? Scottish unionists. Read now #OpenAccess 👇

Almost a decade on, Wales' fiscal reforms deliver nearly £1 Billion windfall but fall short on empowering the Senedd

Major new report calls for tripling of borrowing powers and full income tax control as Fiscal Framework reforms deliver unprecedented budget boost:👇
www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/asset...

This is shockingly uninformed about how polling works

Diolch Thom - you can get a general idea of it here and see individual constituency estimates. This isn’t exactly how i calculate mine but it does a good job jaclarner.github.io/senedd_ethol...

A bar chart showing approval and disapproval ratings for the UK and Welsh governments in April 2025 and September 2025. In April 2025, UK government approval was 15% with 60% disapproval (net -45%), while Welsh government had 19% approval and 48% disapproval (net -29%). By September 2025, UK government approval dropped to 8% with 71% disapproval (net -63%), and Welsh government approval fell to 12% with 51% disapproval (net -39%). Source: ITV Wales polling, Chart by Jac Larner

Two unpopular governments at both ends of the M4 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Reform and Plaid now neck and neck in Senedd voting intention | YouGov Nigel Farage’s party also takes the lead in Westminster voting intention in Wales for the first time

Here you go yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

This should be Reform on 37 not 35!

The Westminster implications are staggering too. On these numbers, Labour would likely be reduced to just 3 Welsh seats, Plaid would win around 6, and Reform could take most of the remaining 23 seats out of Wales's 32 constituencies 🧵 End

Reform's success creates its own problems for government formation. By cannibalising Conservative support, they may find themselves without natural coalition partners, while their vote could be inefficiently distributed across constituencies 🧵

Coalition arithmetic looking a bit complicated - on these numbers only current realistic possibility is some sort of Plaid and Lab agreement (perhaps with LD and Green support). However, now in territory where more Labour losses put this at risk 🧵

The seat projections are pretty dramatic. Allowing for movement of a few points in many directions: Plaid Cymru ~38 seats, Reform UK ~35 seats, Labour ~11 seats, Conservatives ~6 seats, Lib Dems ~3 seats, Greens ~ 1 🧵

Latest ITV BarnCymru 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 poll confirms trend seen over last 6 months - neck and neck race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK for largest party, with Labour falling to even more distant third. Evidence growing of distinct realignment in Wales 🧵

Ahead of the expected proscription of Palestine Action - the first time a protest group has been legally redefined as terrorist - I went through the Hansard of the 2000 Act they're being banned under. Turns out MPs were assured the law wouldn't be applied this way. Thread 🧵🔽

Does anybody have experience of recontacting Prolific participants after a study to measure attitude change over time? Struggling to find information on feasibility of this

For the first time all devolved national elections in the UK will use different electoral systems

Cool site below by @eoghanly.bsky.social allows you to see how they all work turning votes into seats 👇

Universal Pre-K as Economic Stimulus: Evidence from Nine States and Large Cities in the U.S. Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Probably would! www.nber.org/papers/w33767

Devolved Elections - Devolved Parliament Projection Tool Create and share your own Devolved Parliament election projections. Interactive, visual, and up-to-date!

Our nowcast projection for the NI Assembly ‘27:
SF — 28 Seats
DUP — 21 Seats
AP — 16 Seats
UUP — 9 Seats
SDLP — 9 Seats
TUV — 7 Seats

From @devolvedelections.bsky.social & devolvedelections.co.uk/northern-ireland/

Seen the headlines in today's Scottish papers? Join
@scotvoting.bsky.social team TONIGHT 6pm @uofglasgow.bsky.social for an analysis of the the state Scottish electoral politics One Year Out from the 2026 Holyrood elections. Boyd Orr Bldg in-person and on-line
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/one-year-o...

Yes exactly - it calculates swing from 2021 estimates so Greens would win in Cardiff South as they already did well there previously

The 2026 Senedd Election Simulator: One Year to Go Showcasing current research, comments and analysis on the law, politics, history, culture, government and political economy of Wales from the Wales Governance Centre.

Finally it gives us information about coalition possibilities and proportionality of the results. I've written up an explainer here that outlines how it works, what it does and doesn't do, and also plans for improvement. blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/thinking-wal...

It also visualises for seats are actually allocated in different constituencies and tells us how tight the margins are.

First, and the obvious one, is that it can turn vote shares into estimates of seats in the new expanded Senedd using either uniform or proportional swing. Users can either enter their own numbers or choose from presets of different scenarios

Over last year I've been building a Senedd Election Simulator tool. It gives a useful (I hope!) visual explainer of how the new election system turns votes into seats.

🧵 on some of what it can do below:

jaclarner.github.io/senedd_ethol...

This makes complete sense given who voters do and don't like! Here is a plot of mean 0-10 liveability scores 2024 voters gave to other parties. Labour and Plaid voters like each other quite a lot, whereas Reform voters don't particularly like anyone!

Lab's erosion follows pattern elsewhere: migration to progressive alternatives. Plaid are primary beneficiary, with 1/3 of '24 Labour Westminster voters now expressing voting intentions for Plaid. Amplifies established dual-voting where Labour Westminster supporters vote Plaid in devolved elections.

Important methodological context: this represents a single poll, & a new MRP methodology from YouGov not used in Senedd elections before. Wales also traditionally sees fewer high-quality polls than elsewhere so more weight often given to fewer polls

New @itvcymruwales.bsky.social poll shows substantial shift in Welsh political landscape. Plaid Cymru leads with 30%, Reform UK at 25%, Labour at 18% - their lowest since devolution- & Conservatives on 13% - one of their poorest Welsh polling performances in 2 decades. 🧵
www.itv.com/news/wales/2...