Plaid to win Swansea West and Neath?

Having spent the day canvassing Neath town I have little doubt that Plaid will tomorrow win the election day vote in the constituency. I haven’t seen anything like it in all my years. Alun Llywelyn is a very strong candidate against one of the weakest members of the Assembly in Gwenda Thomas.

The problem for Plaid in this seat is 11,000 postal voters. We all know Labour’s form on postal votes (only last Sunday the Times were exposing another scandal) – my personal view is that we should go back to the old system of voting only in polling booths. The secret ballot was a major aim of for the Chartists, and clearly allowing votes outside of a polling booth undermines that principle. The new checks do little to protect against postal fraud, the only way is to ensure that voting takes place in the sanctity of a polling booth.

I remember the 2005 General Election when Plaid won Carmarthen East by nearly 7,000 votes but got decimated in the postal vote count. When there is such a discrepancy between the postal vote count and the polling booth count you have to come to the conclusion that something isn’t quite right.

I think that both postal and booth counts should be counted separate and published as such following the election.

Swansea West is also game on for Plaid. Local boy Ian Titherington is another strong candidate against the lacklustre Andrew Davies. Vaughan Roderick in the BBC is also tipping Ian as a possible shock result. Whereas Neath is a two horsed race, Swansea West is interesting cause all four parties have presence. Plaid could win by Labour losing votes to the other two London parties.

Plaid nationally and locally has run a fantastic campaign. They have managed to rebuild a lot of the lost ground since 1999 in terms of engagement with the people of Wales. Whatever the result there is a platform there to build for the future.