Budget, polls and infighting: the major election learnings

Political editor Ruth Mosalski assesses what you can, and cannot, read into the Caerphilly by-election result

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THE election of Lindsay Whittle to the seat of Caerphilly is historic, there is no doubt about that. Until now, only Labour has held the seat in Senedd or Westminster elections since 1918. Plaid Cymru was jubilant when its candidate was named the victor.

It is bruising for Labour, embarrassing too, and it will make governing in Wales harder as finance minister Mark Drakeford seeks to win enough support in the chamber for his spending plans.

But it is important to remember this was a by-election, and while the result is a political bombshell for Labour and a huge boost to Plaid Cymru, there are reasons to be cautious about reading too much into it.

1. The polls were right

Welsh polling by YouGov is projecting that Labour will slip to third place in the Senedd election in May, with Plaid Cymru and Reform fighting it out at the top to take the most seats.

If the result in Caerphilly had been a total outlier compared to those polls, it would have deeply undermined those projections. But that didn’t happen.

‘The result in the by-election adds yet more evidence to projections - both anecdotal and from polling - that May will be a really hard election for Labour.

2. But by-elections are not always good guides to later results

‘Any election partway through an electoral cycle almost always results in the ruling party receiving a drubbing. Prime Minister and UK Labour leader Keir Starmer's popularity, is, we know, poor. A series of missteps and unpopular policies haven’t helped.

This by-election was held 15 months after he took the keys to Downing Street, and it would always have been a bad time to be asking people what they think of his administration.