A guide to the Senedd elections

Professor Laura McAllister of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre looks ahead to a historic Senedd election.

This article was originally published in the Western Mail on Saturday 21 March 2026.

We’re now a matter of weeks away from an unquestionably fascinating election in Wales, arguably the most important in a quarter century of devolved politics. Traditionally, the UK’s political journalists would be scrolling Google maps to find their way to Cardiff Bay. Now, off-peak trains from Paddington are fully booked, such is the interest in these elections to our national parliament.

Those of us who research Welsh politics are (unusually) in high demand from international media too as political lenses are focused on Cymru. I suppose we should be grateful for their interest - although I have to say, it’s a bit of a pain to answer the same questions around the basics of what’s distinctive politically in Wales. I’d sort of assumed that UK political journalists were across, well - all of the UK.

But in the spirit of public service, we’re always happy to help. Much more important than producers and correspondents, we’ve had confirmed some troublingly low levels of knowledge amongst the public about the Senedd elections. A You Gov/Cardiff University poll revealed that knowledge of the changes to the Senedd itself and the voting system is low. A clear majority (58%) said they didn’t know about the switch to Closed List PR, with only 7% correctly identifying the new system. Meanwhile, 46%, nearly half, of us rely on UK news most often for our political info, and only one in ten of us mainly use Wales-produced sources. These things are unquestionably connected.

Against that unfavourable foundation for the most significant elections since 1999, I'm offering here something of an explainer in the hope that this will help inform as the campaign unfolds and then as we watch the results on 8 May. I’ll have a go at correcting some misunderstandings about Welsh politics and the political landscape too.

1. Let’s start with terminology. These are elections to the’ Senedd’ (or Welsh Parliament) NOT the ‘Welsh Assembly’. That’s like calling football ‘soccer’ or rugby ‘rugger’ - it’s embarrassing and wrong. It’s also out of date. The ‘National Assembly for Wales’ was the original name of our national institution. It was never the ‘Welsh Assembly’. It became ‘Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament’ in 2020, a move designed to reflect its changed status as a law-making parliament.

2. Wales is NOT a ‘principality’, and it never was according to the definition of a land governed by a prince. It’s a historical and ideological myth. The only people who insist on referring to Wales thus are those who know nothing about Wales or who have an axe to grind. Whatever your politics, Wales has been recognised as a nation or a country against a rack of objective international measurements. Therefore, it is entirely legitimate to say ‘national’ when you talk about Welsh politics. If you are concerned that it confuses politics elsewhere, you can always say ‘at Wales’ or ‘at UK’ level.

3. Without wishing to contradict myself, ‘England and Wales’ is a thing. That’s mainly due to history and relatedly, to the asymmetrical nature of the devolution models established for the different nations of the UK back in 1999. So, ‘England and Wales’ (or ‘Wales and England’ for that matter) is factually correct when we are talking about reserved (or non-devolved) areas like criminal justice, policing, welfare, rail infrastructure etc. But keep an eye out for mistaken applications or assumptions as there will be plenty during the campaign. This is important as voters need to know what powers might be exercised by the parties competing for their votes.

4. Changes to the Senedd or ‘Senedd Reform’. You’ll hear a lot mentioned about what’s changing in May. So, here’s a quick digest: the parliamentary term for the Senedd is reduced to four years, meaning the next election after this one will be in 2030. The Senedd is expanding to 96 members or MSs. Spoiler, it’s unpopular - as it always is to add more politicians and that applies everywhere in the world. But it’s especially the case when politicians are as despised as they are currently. But strip away the political hyperbole from some politicians who privately know that we have an under-powered and thus, hamstrung institution. Instead, look at the evidence about what’s needed to establish an effective, fit for purpose parliament and ask why Northern Ireland has 90 MLAs, and Scotland 129 MSPs. Welsh exceptionalism again. I’ve consistently argued that this change is absolutely necessary and, in the long run, will prove worth every penny. Creating a parliament with a sufficient number of elected members will improve the scrutiny of spending, policies and laws. It’s extremely difficult to quantify precisely, but I’d wager that poor scrutiny has cost taxpayers the same as the cost of Senedd expansion. Yes, there are start-up costs for reforming the Senedd Siambr/Chamber to accommodate more MSs, as well as ongoing resourcing costs. But these amount to around 0.07% of the Senedd’s total budget. If the newly elected members take their scrutiny responsibilities seriously and, given the majority might be new to the political game, upskill themselves rapidly with regard to effective challenge, it’ll be well worth the outlay.

The way in which you cast your vote is changing too. In the polling station, you’ll get a single ballot paper with the names of the six plus parties standing (plus any independent candidates). Under the party name will be a list of the candidates from that party in a predetermined order or list. Your job is simply to choose the party you prefer, against which you will place a cross. Who from the closed list is elected depends on each candidate’s position on the list and how many votes a party gains in that constituency. The bottom line is you have no choice as to a specific candidate. That’s taken from you in Closed List PR, posing serious voter choice and accountability issues in my view. More on how votes are translated into seats later.

Who is able to vote? Everyone aged 16 plus, if you’re a British or Irish citizen, or a citizen of another EU country, or a citizen of another country and have permission to enter or stay here (or you do not need that permission).

You will hear people claiming that a more proportional system like Closed List PR removes the need for tactical voting. Not true. It will still be a thing, especially in a polarised political context like ours is. Neither is it true that if you vote for a certain party, you’ll be guaranteed to get a MS elected from that party. It’s not that simple as it depends on how other parties perform in your new mega constituency. There’s no minimum vote threshold, i.e. a minimum percentage of votes that a party must get in order to gain any seats in the legislature. However, there is an anticipated de facto threshold of around 12-14%. So, if your favoured party is polling well below that level, a tactical vote for a party close to its views becomes a consideration.

Equally, voting against a party you really don’t want to be in power is fine but you probably need to weigh up which party is best placed to have governing potential.

In some countries, smaller parties join together to overcome the de facto threshold under D’Hondt. So, tactical voting remains a thing but less necessary in this election than in a Westminster election.

5. The reason we’re so excited at this election is that it is genuinely competitive, meaning there is proper jeopardy around the outcome. That’s been far from the case previously. The Labour party has been synonymous with Welsh politics. It’s been part of the historic fabric of governing here for over a century. 28 consecutive Westminster victories and the domination of Senedd elections since 1999 means the principal question has been, will Labour get an outright majority. If the data from polling is correct, that appears to be changing. That would be a historic and groundbreaking moment for our democratic institutions as they’d face the demands of new, untested, and ambitious leadership.

6. Turnout in elections is always significant, not just to count how many of us can be bothered to vote but because of what it tells us about the nation's democratic health. 47% was the turnout in the 2021 election - the highest it’s ever been, but calling it a record-high suggests more than it deserves with over half of the electorate choosing to stay at home. Political scientists will always say that voters turn out when the stakes are high and perhaps with the cost of living soaring, public services struggling, and insurgent parties making their case, this will be the most urgent Senedd election yet. We saw in Caerffili that when the glare of the UK’s media turned on that by-election that voter engagement reached unprecedented levels. It’s possible that will happen again in May. Plus, differential turnouts amongst different age groups especially could determine which party emerges with most seats.

7. How to campaign. This is a challenge for parties this time as we have new and much bigger constituencies. Gwynedd and Maldwyn runs from the Irish Sea to the English border, whilst Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd is well, just immense. But it’s not just size. With six members each and a PR system in play, no party can gobble up all the seats, which poses questions about how to focus campaigning. Faced with such huge constituencies, will the campaigns move online more, and how will that affect engagement with voters and the feel of the election?

8. We have already seen some party manifestos launched. Manifestos are usually detailed pledges or promises from different parties as to what they will do if in government. There are often costings, changes, promises, and red lines used for potential governing deals etc. But who reads these documents and do voters care about the detail? Most of us vote on an emotional basis so does the practical and financial viability about pledges actually matter? The new electoral system bakes in an expectation that parties will work together, so one thing that close election watchers will be doing is reading between the lines to see where parties are giving themselves space to work with others (or make deals for concessions) after votes are counted.

9. Opinion polling. Any game of political bingo has to include how many times you’ll hear politicians say ‘the only vote that counts is the one on polling day.’ Of course, polls are snap shots and come with lots of caveats and health warnings - around margins of error, sampling and weightings, as well as the vested interest of some polling companies. But they do give us a flavour of the political mood and how that might be shifting over a period of time. Thus, looked at longitudinally, polls can offer some important trend insight. Plus, we have had some real polls - Caerffili here in Wales and Gorton and Denton in England. The best advice is to see all of this as a backdrop, rather than a bible.

10. Media election coverage. Some is sense checked and verified, plenty’s not, especially on social media. At this risk of sounding like President Trump, in the current climate, one person’s fake news is another’s truth. However, evidence matters, or at least it should do, so everything should be challenged or at least properly sense checked. While I’m at it, why on earth does the mainstream media still insist on vox pops where they interview random people in the street to solicit their views or opinions? At best, this is pointlessly reductionist and a waste of limited political air time; at worst, it’s misleading and potentially distorting.

11. The election counts. In a break with British convention, these will not take place overnight, instead they will start on the morning of Friday, 8 May so set your alarm clocks. The counts will be very different this time. The arithmetical formula we’ll use to translate votes cast into seats won is called the D’Hondt system, named after Belgian lawyer and mathematician, Victor d'Hondt, who developed it in the 1880s to better accommodate different linguistic groups and identities in the Belgian parliament. Votes are counted in rounds with a starting quotient of zero for each party. In the first round, the party with the overall highest total wins the first seat.  In the next round, we divide each party's votes by the number of seats they’ve already won, plus one.  So, after winning one seat, a party’s votes are then divided by two; after winning two seats, their votes are divided by three and this continues.

Some features of this system reward the parties that gain most votes overall as the quotient generates ‘cheaper’ votes then won by those parties when seats are allocated lower down the list. This is important in a multi-party system as we now have, as modelling shows that very small numbers of votes will therefore affect who wins the 5th and 6th seats on the lists in each constituency. That’s a third of the overall 96 seats that will depend on very small numbers of votes cast. It also means that anyone predicting a result at the moment is talking nonsense. The big question will be whether the smaller parties can squeak in in these seats, or whether a tidal wave of votes for the leading parties will see them hoover up all the seats between them. Plus, these days, which is a big party and which is a small party is anyone’s guess!

12. Some things we know about the next 96 MSs. Most of them will be new as a large churn is guaranteed. Half of the Labour group of 29 is standing down and many other current MSs will almost certainly not be returned. We will likely see a whole new slate of MSs, many with no previous experience of politics at any level. We are yet to see the Reform UK candidate lists, but a realistic punt is that there will be fewer women MSs elected than in the current parliament of 26 (43%). This rather underlines the case for gender quotas in my view.

It’ll also be interesting to see the impact of all this on the culture and operation of politics at the Senedd. Whilst we definitely need much sharper focus on scrutiny and an ability to offer tough challenge to government if Senedd expansion is to be justified, we also need to avoid a behavioural race to the bottom if public trust in our politics is to be revitalised.

So, what happens once the votes are counted on Friday 8 May? Deciding who’s won is not as simple as usual. See my previous Wales Online column (paywall) when I explain this as well as potential governing options. We could have a party win the largest number of seats but without a majority and unable to engineer sufficient support from other parties to therefore govern. That’s PR politics I’m afraid and it happens pretty much everywhere that uses PR. Despite this, there’ll be plenty of claims of crises of legitimacy and democratic deficit I’d predict.

We will have to show patience and understanding - commodities in short supply in politics - as May will signal the start of a hugely significant fresh chapter for Wales and our politics. In this election (unlike at Westminster first-past-the-post contests) no one has more power than you, the individual voter, to influence the make-up of the next Senedd and therefore, the next Welsh Government. It’s a big responsibility when put like that, but it’s about time citizens held the real power too.