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Notes
1. To give but one illustration of this dominance: Labour have won at least a plurality of the Welsh vote at every UK general election from 1922 onwards.
2. After a bitter leadership contest in 1999, Alun Michael was elected by Labour in Wales to lead the party in the first NAW election. Mr Michael's victory was widely viewed as the result of an internal party stitch-up imposed from London. Mr Michael was replaced by Rhodri Morgan as both Labour leader and First Minister of the NAW in February 2000.
3. The two polls were both telephone polls—conducted, respectively, by NOP for ITV-Wales and Beaufort Research for The Western Mail. Results from private polling from several of the parties, conducted over several months leading up to the election, had been revealed to the authors on a confidential basis.
4. The final two seats were expected to be retained by the independents, Trish Law in Blaenau Gwent and John Marek in Wrexham. In the event, while Law won comfortably, Marek was defeated in what was the Labour party's sole constituency gain of the election.
5. A telephone poll conducted by ICM for the BBC prior to the election, which replicated a question used in previous academic surveys, found the highest-ever level of respondents (35%) choosing the ‘National Assembly for Wales’ when asked which level of government “has most influence over the way Wales is run”. (The other alternatives offered were the European Union, the UK government in London and local councils).
6. Such survey data will be gathered via an Election Study, to be conducted by the Institute of Welsh Politics and the National Centre for Social Research, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
7. Indeed, given that—partly due to the peculiar circumstances of the 1918 UK election—Labour did not stand candidates in one quarter of all the Welsh seats, 2007 was in reality Labour's worst ever result in a devolved or parliamentary election in Wales. 2007 was also the first year that Labour's vote share in Wales had not been higher than its vote share in Scotland at a devolved or UK election since 1924.
8. The only seat where Labour's vote share increased was Cardiff Central, where it rose by 2.0%.