"The arms that you wield now are not such as your forefathers wielded; but they are infinitely more effective, and infinitely more irresistable" ~ Cymru Fydd leaflet, 1890

Wednesday 11 May 2016

FM Wars IV - A New Hope

Mark the date in your calendar. May 11th was the day when Welsh politics became interesting as what was meant to be the formality of reinstating Carwyn Jones as First Minister took a shock turn.

Ynys Môn AM Rhun ap Iorwerth nominated Plaid Cymru Leader Leanne Wood as their challenger. Nothing interesting there but what followed was as all the Labour AMs naturally voted for Carwyn Jones and all the Plaid Cymru, Conservative and UKIP AMs voted for Leanne Wood. The sole Lib Dem AM, Kirsty Williams gave her vote to Carwyn in order to create a dead lock.

The vote finished 29-29. As is customary the Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officer do not vote. Since they are from Plaid Cymru and Labour it wouldn't have made any difference at all.

As interesting as all this is I wanted to look at the claims from Labour that they had a clear mandate to govern.

Now I've already debunked the 'largest party myth' when Labour were banging on about it before the General Election in 2015 and the same rules stand here in Wales and Rhun ap Iorwerth mention it in the EBC article. I wont repeat myself or Rhun, I'll just post some sexy charts to show Labour's mandate for what it is.

This isn't a sexy chart, It's Carwyn having a blub. Source EBC

Thankfully the wiki guys have caught up and done the tables so I was able to quickly copy and paste into excel and re-jig as necessary. Here's the complete list of results, if you want to look at them seat by seat then check out my results post here.

Source

From here I took out all the parties who didn't win seats. And deleted all the columns apart from the votes for the constituency and regions. I then rearranged it so that the Lib Dem was next to Labour. After totalling and working out the percentages we then get this pie chart.

Pie chart showing total votes for each seat winning party for both constituency and region in the Welsh elections 2016.

Next we then add the votes up to show where they stood on the big question, Carwyn or Leanne.

Pie chart showing total votes for each seat winning party for both constituency and region in the Welsh elections 2016 divided into #TeamLeanne or #TeamCarwyn

Now I'm sure this is where it starts to get awkward for Labour and their claims of a mandate. From this chart I could say that it clearly shows that Leanne Wood has the mandate. Of course this would still be bullshit just as Labour's claims are.

The only thing that matters is which side wins the vote. Whoever wins the vote gets to become FM. Labour and their pals at the EBC might be right in saying that this is simply the other parties giving Labour a bloody nose. But it should be seen as a warning of what they should expect for the next few years.

Of course, if they can't select a new First Minister then we'll have to have a new election.

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