The Day Wales Didn’t Say No

on March 5, 2011
Categories: Things

History will, no doubt, record March 4 2011 as an historic day for Wales as the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) gets the ‘yes’ vote it needed to allow it to have primary law making powers without needing to revert to Westminster for approval.

This is not going to be a political post but one that just gives some facts about the statistics of the turnout and result. Why? Well, I just get sick of politicians claiming huge victories by presenting bad maths to its’ electorate.

In 1997 the Welsh devolution referendum determined that there was support for an assembly for Wales with devolved powers. On September 18 1997, 50.1% of the Welsh electorate turned out to vote, of which 50.3% (559,419) voted yes and 49.7%(552,698) voted no. On that basis, The National Assembly for Wales was created.

Yesterday, 35.6% of the electorate voted; 63.5% (517,132) said yes and  36.5%(297,380) said no.

Politicians, and the WAG supported media, across Wales were hailing the yes vote as a huge positive swing towards support for more powers for WAG with a 26% increase in the yes vote on 1997.

Of course, you can cut statistics many ways.

My analysis is that 42,287 fewer people voted in favour of WAG yesterday than in 1997. A reduction of 7.5%

More a case of not saying No than shouting Yes.

2 Responses to “The Day Wales Didn’t Say No”

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  1. Gwilym ap Llew
    March 5, 2011 at 7:38 pm

    You’re right. There is no great enthuisiasm for more devolution. We weren’t given the option to vote for abolishing the Assembly.

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  2. Nick HP
    March 7, 2011 at 9:12 am

    The result was indeed shameful for two reasons. First the result was entirely created by the joint effort of all political parties in Wales to get the public to vote them, the politicians, more powers when no need or demand had been demonstrated. Second, by my calculation, this means that a mere 22.6% of the Welsh electorate actually voted YES. Until recent times it was not unusual for a referendum to need to demonstrate support of at least half of the electorate to succeed. Clearly we have the rule of the few in Wales.

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