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April 23, 2007
Effects of PR on politics in Wales
Here's an interesting missive from the electoral frontline from Guto Thomas, the BBC Wales political correspondent. He paints a picture of the different type of electioneering and connecting with voters that is now becoming - in his words - "the electoral orthodoxy". The demands of a First Past the Post system squash or limit this type of change, so it looks unlikely to spread eastward across Offa's Dyke anytime soon.
"In Wales, the crucial question will in fact be about how many of their core voters the political parties manage to mobilise. Moreover, this is an election that won't be determined so much by the total level of turnout achieved across Wales, but by the differential turnout achieved by each one of the parties, in specific key constituencies, and in terms of the second vote, across each one of the five electoral regions. This new electoral orthodoxy is illustrated by the way that candidates have been encouraged by all the political parties to identify the local issues which most concern voters, such the threat of job losses, or proposals to reconfigure, downgrade or close the local school or hospital."
"With limited evidence of the intention of any one of the parties to conduct anything approaching a sustained, daily, national campaign, then this signals a fundamental change in the way the parties hope to re-engage with the voters. Whether this will actually work - or whether the level of public dissatisfaction with politics will remain dominant in this election - is impossible to predict. Regardless of what happens in 2007 however, "localism" it seems is definitely here to stay, as the backbone of a new Welsh politics."
Posted by malcolmclark on April 23, 2007
Comments
"The demands of a First Past the Post system squash or limit this type of change, so it looks unlikely to spread eastward across Offa's Dyke anytime soon".
As an old Russian proverb says: '...When a neighbour's haystack catches fire, it warms the tea in our own samovar...' (quoted, I believe, by Nikita Kruschev, 1961).
Posted by: Nigel Baldwin at April 23, 2007 10:06 PM
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