Welsh Election Survey 2019

The proposed research seeks to extend the 2016 Welsh Election Study (WES) and, in so doing, provide the first-ever study in Wales where substantial individual-level data on voting behaviour and political attitudes for elections to different levels of government is available. This would add crucial information that would help substantially in fulfilling one of the major research goals of WES: understanding why vote choices can differ between different electoral arenas. This extension of WES would also offer the only opportunity to gain detailed insight into the potential realignment in Welsh politics that the 2019 election could deliver.

The British Election Study (BES) cannot be expected to explore in detail this potential historic re-alignment in Welsh politics; they have a wider remit to explore the election across Britain, which they are having to fulfil at very short notice. It will not include sufficient Welsh-specific questions to explore the historic shifts occurring in Welsh politics.

The research would comprise an online survey of voting age adults in Wales (with a sample of approximately 2000; fieldwork to be conducted by YouGov). With these data the project aims:
1. To make possible a detailed and focused account of voting behaviour in Wales - one of the key battlegrounds in the 2019 General Election;
2. To understand how Welsh voters interact with UK-level politics after two decades of devolution;
3. To add to the substantial time-series of questions collected in Wales as part of the Welsh Election Study.

Data sets will be made available to the wider academic community.

There will be impact on government in Wales and at UK level. The research would provide the first-ever study in Wales where we had substantial individual-level data on voting behaviour and political attitudes for elections to different levels of government. This would add crucial information that would help substantially in fulfilling one of the major research goals of WES: understanding why vote choices can differ between different electoral arenas. This extension of WES would also give us with the only opportunity to gain detailed insight into the potential realignment in Welsh politics that the 2019 election could deliver.

We are proposing a number of dissemination events in Cardiff and London (January 2020). We also propose to host a joint event with the Scottish Election Study (SES) in April 2020, in London, to present our findings, in addition to several events in Wales focused on dissemination.