PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, takes a look at last week's by-election in Caerphilly. 

I can’t remember a by-election for the Welsh Senedd ever attracting such interest.

I recall some recent Westminster by-elections not even securing rolling coverage on the BBC (most obviously when George Galloway won in Bradford) but the vote in Caerphilly was treated as a major event.

Given that Wales looks like an area of particularly strong growth in Reform support, alongside the general polling travails of both Labour and the Conservatives, this had all the makings of a potential electoral earthquake.

In many ways it was, but perhaps a little lower down the Richter scale than might have been predicted. One survey had suggested a narrow Reform victory was on the cards, but in the event, Plaid Cymru topped the poll by a reasonably comfortable margin.

In the “expectations game” of modern media management, this will therefore be presented as a disappointment for Reform. It apparently no longer matters how well or badly you perform in an objective sense. Instead, what counts is how well or badly you perform compared to media predictions in the hours before polling day.

With all the caveats about reading too much into a single by-election, here are my takeaways from the kerfuffle in Caerphilly.

First, the Reform juggernaut is real and moving at pace. The Reform vote jumped from 1.7% to 36% - a twentyfold increase. These sort of gigantic leaps in Reform support are becoming commonplace in local council by-elections. They don’t always lead to Reform winning the seat but the party is putting meaningful scores on the doors virtually everywhere. I’m scouring results across the land and looking for Reform candidates who end up with under 15% of the vote – such outcomes are nearly impossible to find these days.

Second, the overall result for the “mainstream” or “legacy” parties was truly disastrous. Labour lost more than three quarters of its previous vote share, the Conservatives lost nearly 90% of theirs and the LibDem vote about halved from what was already a derisory low level. Overall, what used to be called “the three main parties” secured a pitiful 14.5% between them. Can anyone find any election in history contested by these three parties in which their combined share was so low? I’ve looked and I can’t. I can’t find anything even close to it. The result in Caerphilly confirms evidence from elsewhere that the party system we are used to is in total meltdown.

Third, tactical voting is going to (continue to) play an enormous role in Parliamentary elections (although not in the next Senedd elections, see below). All the evidence from Caerphilly is that virtually every Conservative voter switched to Reform and left-leaning voters rallied behind Plaid Cymru (even the Green vote was microscopic despite their recent jump in the national polls). Reform’s vote was also swelled by a large chunk of working-class former Labour voters switching over to the turquoise army (however, this is a switch in first preference voting rather than based on tactical considerations).

Fourth, if you’re keen on seeing turnout and participation increase at elections, then a major campaigning effort from Reform is what you should be wishing for. Reform inspires large numbers of people to flock to its banner whilst also generating enhanced determination from those keen to stop them. Thursday’s by-election saw a turnout of over 50% - measurably higher than at the time of the last Senedd elections. I suspect we are now in an era of seeing turnout increase across the board – especially when we get to the next general election.

Fifth, the new electoral system being used in next May’s Welsh elections could spell disaster for the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems. Although tactical voting is likely to be on the rise in First Past the Post elections, this won’t be the case under the proportional D'Hondt system being adopted for the Senedd. Wales is to be broken up into sixteen mega constituencies, each with six seats elected under PR. To guarantee winning a single seat in any of these super-districts, a party will need to secure one seventh (14.3%) of the vote. You could pick up a seat with a bit less than this, depending on how other votes fall, but as you start to dip below that 14.3% number it becomes more and more likely you will secure no representation in the Senedd at all. This must be a genuine concern for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats everywhere across Wales and probably now for Labour too – at least outside of what remains of its supposed heartlands.

Finally, if there was a reward for persistence it surely goes to Lindsay Whittle, the successful Plaid Cymru candidate. Having fought and lost in Caerphilly in thirteen previous elections, he finally won through at the fourteenth attempt. Has any candidate for public office ever shown such stickability?

We already knew politics was changing apace in Britain. Caerphilly shows there is no danger of the pace of change dropping – in fact, it may be picking up. God only knows where this leads us – but I expect the party system in 2029 to be unrecognisable compared to that of 2024.

This makes winning the argument for major political and constitutional change across a swathe of different fronts (and within different political parties), the only viable strategy. Millions of people now seem determined to ensure there is a change of government when we next go to the polls. I think we need to place as much emphasis on making certain that any new incoming government has some sort of plan about what to do when it gets there.

Keep the flag of freedom flying!