Welsh and Scottish elections minus ten days

Welsh and Scottish parliamentary elections occur on May 7, as well as English local elections. In the US, a referendum passes in Virginia that will allow a Democratic gerrymander.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.

Welsh and Scottish parliamentary elections and English local government elections will occur on Thursday May 7. Labour has been the dominant party at Welsh elections since the first devolved election in 1999, winning half or just under half the seats. At this election, there will be 96 members elected in 16 six-member electorates by proportional representation. This reform scraps the first-past-the-post seats.

The Election Maps UK aggregate gives the left-wing Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru 29.1%, followed by the populist right Reform at 26.4%, Labour 14.9%, the Conservatives 10.3%, the Greens 10.3% and the Liberal Democrats 6.0%. Seat projections give Plaid 38 seats, Reform 30, Labour 13, the Conservatives eight, the Greens five and the Lib Dems two. If this occurs, Plaid and Labour combined would be able to govern.

Of the 129 Scottish seats, 73 are elected by FPTP and 56 are list seats, with the list seats used to maintain overall proportionality, so that parties that dominate FPTP seats win few list seats. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has dominated since 2011.

In the Election Maps UK aggregate, the SNP has 35.2% of the vote in the FPTP seats, followed by 18.0% for Labour, 17.6% Reform, 10.8% Conservatives, 10.1% Lib Dems and 6.0% Greens. In list seats, the Greens have 13.0% and the SNP 29.4%. Seat projections give the SNP 61, Labour 18, Reform 17, the Greens 13, the Conservatives 11 and the Lib Dems nine. If this occurs, the SNP will hold government with the Greens’ support.

A total of 5,066 coucillors will be up for election in England on May 7. The large majority of councillors were last elected at the 2022 local elections. At those elections, Labour won the Projected National Share (PNS) by 35-30 over the Conservatives with 19% for the Lib Dems. The PNS calculates a national vote share for council elections. At the 2025 local elections, the PNS was 30% Reform, 20% Labour, 17% Lib Dems, 15% Conservatives and 11% Greens.

Current national vote shares are 26.3% Reform, 19.1% Labour, 18.5% Conservatives, 15.8% Greens and 12.2% Lib Dems. If these vote shares occur at the local elections, Reform and the Greens will gain massively at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives. Since January, there has been a trend to the Greens and against Reform. Seat projections now have Reform well below a majority in the House of Commons, but adding the Conservatives to Reform gives the right a majority.

US updates

Last Tuesday, a referendum on a Democratic gerrymander in Virginia succeeded by a 51.5-48.5 margin. Subject to legal challenges, Democrats will implement a 10-1 gerrymander of Virginia’s 11 federal House seats, a four-seat gain for Democrats. However, the 3.0-point margin for “yes” was lower than Kamala Harris’ 5.8-point margin over Donald Trump in 2024 in Virginia.

In near-final results from the April 16 New Jersey 11 special election, Democrat Mejia defeated Republican Hathaway by 59.9-39.6, an 11.6-point swing to Democrats from the Harris Trump margin in NJ 11. Since my post on this special, one Democrat has resigned over financial irregularities, and another has died. Republicans hold a 218-212 lead in the House of Representatives with five vacancies.

In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump’s net approval is a record low -18.5, 1.8 points worse than on April 16. In Silver’s aggregate of the generic ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by an unchanged 5.7 points. Midterm elections occur this November.

Hungarian election final results

Of the 199 Hungarian seats, 106 are elected by FPTP and the remaining 93 by national proportional representation with a 5% threshold. At the April 12 election, the conservative and pro-European Tisza won 141 seats (new), while Viktor Orbán’s governing far-right Fidesz won 52 seats (down 83).

The 141 seats for Tisza is above the 133 needed for a two-thirds supermajority that is required to change the constitution. Tisza won the 106 FPTP seats by 96-10 from vote shares of 55.3-36.7. In the national list, Tisza won 53.2% and Fidesz 38.6% (down 15.5%). At the 2022 election, the United for Hungary (EM) alliance of mainly left-wing parties had won 57 seats. At that election, Fidesz won the FPTP seats by 87-19 on vote shares of 52.5-36.9.

10 thoughts on “Welsh and Scottish elections minus ten days”

  1. “ Current national vote shares are 26.3% Reform, 19.1% Labour, 18.5% Conservatives, 15.8% Greens and 12.2% Lib Dems. If these vote shares occur at the local elections”

    This is not factual accurate. The Green party is doing better than this. The right leaning pollster. “more in common” or it might be “find out now” has the party doing much worse than around 12% but most of pulse have the green party in second place at around 18-19% considering 16-year-olds can now vote I am more believing of the latter polls.

    I also clicked the link that is on this post and it says the green part is actually averaging in around 15%. Maybe it just updated within the last two hours. But my point stands that the green party is doing better than 12%.

    But we will find out after the local elections..

    I also have spoken to some people in the UK that say that might actually be many shy green voters. If this is true, the greens could be doing even better. The greens did much better in the Gorton and Denton by election than expected. So I think we are in for an exciting election.

    Edit; sorry I read it wrong I didn’t see it was Lib Dems on 12%. But my point still stands that the Greens are doing better

  3. How many US politicians die in office every year?

    Given that most of them are in their 80s and 90s it is probably LOADS!

  4. “Democrats will implement a 10-1 gerrymander of Virginia’s 11 federal House seats, a four-seat gain for Democrats. “

    The law doesn’t give the Dems 10 Seats in VA.

    What is does is make some of the redistricted seats make it more possible for the Dems to win. They still have to get out the vote if they are to actually win!

  5. Dingbat says:
    Monday, April 27, 2026 at 6:05 pm
    How many US politicians die in office every year?
    Given that most of them are in their 80s and 90s it is probably LOADS!

    ************

    Which is clearly not true otherwise there would have been loads of special elections to replace them.

    In 2025 there were 6 vacancies and 3 caused by death of the member. That’s 3 out of 435.

    So far in 2026 there are / will be 8 special elections. (One a hold over from 2025) 2 caused by deaths.

    There have been far more vacancies caused by members bad behaviour than by deaths.

    There have been no Senatorial deaths in the current session which is remarkable as the average of Senators is higher than for the House. 64 compared to 58

  6. The voting age in Wales is 16; which it should be here. It would be interesting to a demographic breakdown of the voting outcome once the election has been finalised.

  9. UK Greens leader Zac Polanski has just made a huge unforced error in the week before the council elections. After an anti-Semitic terrorist attack committed by a Somalian immigrant, who travelled to a London suburb with significant Jewish population and stabbed the first two people he identified as Jewish, thankfully non-fatally. He was then disarmed by police using tasers and physical force until he dropped his knife.

    Polanski out of the blue decided to retweet a twitter follower that accused the Met Police of police brutality. It’s likely going to be the biggest story coming out of the event in the next few days.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *