A lot of coverage has been given to the recent opinion polls leading up to the Welsh General Election. The suggestion is that Labour are heading for a significant majority while Plaid Cymru are losing some ground.
Firstly, be they true or false, the fact that these opinion polls receive ‘news’ coverage feeds into a narative creating an impression which feeds back into other opinion polls creating, for better of worse, a sort of self-fullfilling prophecy.
Also it must be remembered that they are primarily a reflection of the political opinion regarding the current financial situation, after all this is what is on most people’s minds and is what’s in the news 24/7, and people are obviously concerned about their jobs, but it’s an issue that is nearly entierly out of the hands of the National Assembly.
When a specific question has been asked about which party people would like to see in Government (Western Mail last week) the response shows that any combination of the favoured outcome includes Plaid Cymru, at least as part of the Government.
But regardledd of all of tehse things, I’ve walked the streets of Rhos, Chirk, Coedpoeth, Cefn Mawr, Corwen, Llandrillo, Penley, Llangollen, Glyn Ceiriog, Brymbo and many other places and spoken to hundreds if not thousands of people. Their response? A complete disillusionment with Labour, and a desire for change. You’d expect me to say this in the middle of an election campaign, but I’m only saying it as it is. The response that we are getting on the door step in Clwyd South at least is considerably different to the picture drawn by the Opinion Polls.
I’m really enjoying this campaign, and am looking forward to every day of it! (except for last Thursday and Friday when I was bedbound with fever, but that’s another story!)
This is going to be a great election battle, and I’m going to enjoy every second of it! For Wales!
Mabon ap Gwynfor 
I have no reason to doubt your reaction on the street. In fact, canvassing for Plaid across Wales over the years I’ve found the same reaction. People like the policies they can’t find a reason not to vote Plaid, but when it comes to the crunch they don’t. As Marcus Warner says on his blog, by guess is if you did the ‘Pepsi challenge’ then most Labour voters and members would probably support Plaid’s policies.
The thing is, and to put it bluntly, people are two faced. They like Plaid’s policies, they may even think they ‘should’ vote Plaid, but they don’t cos in the end Welsh politics is all down to a cultural vote.
For many people Plaid is ‘too Welshie’. There’s nothing Plaid can do about that, ‘cos it’s not Plaid’s ‘problem’ except that the sad thing is, being seen as being ‘too Welsh’ in today’s Wales loses you votes.
No matter how good the policies, how welcoming Plaid is to different people, how internationalists Plaid is; in the end Plaid asks questions of people, questions of their identity – questions which some people find difficult (even if Plaid has no interest in pointing fingers etc) . So, people will stick to where they feel culturally safer … and that tends to be the Labour or Liberal party. They’ll deny this, they’ll say it’s down to policies, but in the end it’s down to culture.
God that is convenient. So Plaid are perfect as they are and it is the electorates fault. Have you any idea how unbelievably arrogant that sounds?