Shall we have a look at what the Senedd would have looked like if our electoral system was truly proportional?

Why the hell not...

[Thread]

First of all the caveats.

Obviously, if you'd had a different electoral system people may have voted differently as it would remove the need for tactical voting.

But let's work with what we've got.

So what was the actual result?

There were only four parties that won seats:

Labour - 30

Conservative - 16

Plaid Cymru - 13

Liberal Democrat - 1

The Senedd looked like this:

What about if we just look at the constituency votes?

If it was based on how people voted in their constituencies then Labour would lose 6 seats with the Tories and Plaid both losing 1 each.

The Lib Dems would gain 2 with the Greens, Abolish and Reform all getting 1 seat.

The Welsh Parliament would look like this:

What if it were based on the regional vote?

If we look at the regional vote percentage even more parties win seats with UKIP and Propel both getting a seat.

In this vote the Greens and Abolish both end up with two seats.

This reflects how people tend to vote for the person they think has a chance to win in the constituencies but are more likely to choose a party they would like represented in the Senedd when they come to vote in the regional list.

In this case, the Senedd would look like this:

Labour 22
Conservative 15
Plaid Cymru 12
Liberal Democrat 3
Green 2
Abolish 2
Reform 1
UKIP 1
Propel 1

Quick bit of housekeeping.

The reason why some of the tabs don't have a full 60 seats is because the final votes were split along lots of smaller parties and independents so a full amount of seats couldn't be allocated.

The seats are calculated by apply the percentage of the vote to 60 and then rounding to the nearest whole number.

You can read the full story (and amazing interactive graphs which I mas in the middle of last night) here: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/proportional-vote-parliament-senedd-election-20554890

made* (still tired)