Arfon
2010 Results:
Conservative: 4416 (16.93%)
Labour: 7928 (30.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 3666 (14.06%)
Plaid Cymru: 9383 (35.98%)
UKIP: 685 (2.63%)
Majority: 1455 (5.58%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 8165 (35.5%)
Plaid Cymru: 8072 (35.1%)
Conservative: 3431 (14.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 2599 (11.3%)
Other: 748 (3.2%)
Majority: 93 (0.4%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 3483 (12.4%)
Labour: 7538 (26.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 3508 (12.5%)
Plaid Cymru: 12747 (45.5%)
UKIP: 723 (2.6%)
Majority: 5209 (18.6%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 4403 (15.2%)
Labour: 9383 (32.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 1823 (6.3%)
Plaid Cymru: 12894 (44.4%)
UKIP: 550 (1.9%)
Majority: 3511 (12.1%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 4230 (12.4%)
Labour: 9667 (28.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 1686 (5%)
Plaid Cymru: 17616 (51.8%)
Referendum: 811 (2.4%)
Majority: 7949 (23.4%)
Boundary changes: The seat undergoes large changes to bring it in line with the preserved county boundaries in Wales. It gains Bangor from
Profile: Arfon is a new seat, replacing the old seat of Caernarfon. The seat is the far North-West of Wales, facing Anglesey across the Menai Strait. It`s predecessor was an extemely Welsh speaking seat and a Plaid Cymru stronghold in recent years under Dafydd Wigley. The new seat gains the small university city of Bangor (one of the smallest cities in the UK), while losing more rural Welsh speaking areas, and becomes a Labour/Plaid Cymru ultra-marginal.
The main towns and cities in the constituency are Bangor and Welsh-speaking Caernarfon, the site of Caernarfon castle where Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in 1969. The South of the constituency stretches into Snowdonia National Park, with the peak of Mount Snowdon lying just inside the constituency border.
Current MP: Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru)
Robin Millar (Conservative) Born Bangor. Local government management consultant. Forest Heath councillor.
Alun Pugh (Labour) Born 1955, Llwynypia. Director of an environmental charity. Assembly member for Clwyd West 1999-2007.
Sarah Green (Liberal Democrat) Educated at University of Wales. Press and PR executive. Contested Ynys Mon 2005.Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru) 
Elwyn Williams (UKIP) 2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 56647
Male: 47.5%
Female: 52.5%
Under 18: 22.7%
Over 60: 20.1%
Born outside UK: 3.2%
White: 98.2%
Asian: 0.6%
Mixed: 0.5%
Other: 0.5%
Christian: 72.2%
Full time students: 10.5%
Graduates 16-74: 21.6%
No Qualifications 16-74: 28.2%
Owner-Occupied: 63.9%
Social Housing: 22.1% (Council: 17.9%, Housing Ass.: 4.2%)
Privately Rented: 9.3%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 20.5%
Could he be biding his time for a nice safe seat in the Assembly – there are vacancies in Cardiff West and Aberavon after all.
Still no Prospective LAbour Candidate – which in a nominal Labour seat is pretty remarkable.
I think Labour will probably lose as a result of a swing from Labour to Conservative, with PC holding pretty steady (or only a slight decline) and therefore winning the seat. Not having a candidate doesn’t help matters for Labour either.
Rumours that David Taylor could be the Labour candidate.
Ladbrokes:
PC 1/10
Lab 6/1
Con 14/1
LD 100/1
Who is David Taylor?
He’s a bit infamous in Wales. He’s the brains behind Aneurin Glyndwr – which is an “attack” blog on behalf of Welsh Labour. Works in the Assembly as a SPAD I believe.
Here’s Vaughan’s blog on him (using Google translate…but you should be able to follow)
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Fthereporters%2Fvaughanroderick%2F2009%2F09%2Fprynwch_docyn.html&sl=cy&tl=en&history_state0=
Ladbrokes:
PC 1/10
Oh come on Shadsy – give us a break!!
Plaid Cymru GAIN no problems, Con and Lab battle for second
Who is the Labour candidate here? As it’s a notional Labour seat, but no Labour or Tory PPCs are listed.
Conservatives will be selecting soon – the closing date for nominations was 12th Oct.
Anyone we know trying do you know Matt?
Hywel Williams will ‘gain’ this seat as the ‘incumbant’.
Talk him down a bit will you Peter? – still annoyed at Shadsy’s remarkably ungenerous odds….
1-10 is not that bad if you consider it a cert Dewi. You are still getting more than if you put your money in the building society between now and the election. It’s just a question of how much Ladbrokes would let you have on. I am not sure whether they would let you put down, say £10,000 to win a grand.
To get a bigger price I think you are relying some sort of freakish occurance temporarily causing William’s price to lengthen; the intervention of a popular local independent candidate for example.
“1-10 is not that bad if you consider it a cert Dewi. You are still getting more than if you put your money in the building society between now and the election.”
I think I might just wait till the week before – not tying up my hard earned cash and the odds can hardly get any worse…
Dewi – no information on the selection I’m afraid, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dylan Jones-Evans gets the nomination here
I was totally wrong – Robin Millar has got selected – he is Bangor born but is now a Forest Heath councillor.
Labour select on 6th December, one of the candidates is Alun Pugh (ex Welsh Culture minister and ex AM for Clwyd West)
A bad result for Plaid Cymru would be not getting around half the vote – I’d expect AT LEAST 45% for them. Labour will come second, but if current trends continue here it will be an extremely poor second.
Alun Pugh duly selected as Labour Candidate.
But he does not have a snowballs chance in hell of retaining this notional Labour seat.
Yes thats right Iain. I wonder if there is still anybody in existance that think Labour have a hope of notionally “holding” this seat?
It’s extremely unlikely – it could only happen if there was some falling away of support for the nationalists when people thought they needed to support Labour to prevent the Tories winning throughout Britain, but I think Pl C will continue to do pretty well and take this fairly comfortably.
My prediction %
PC 45
Lab 23
Con 17
LD 10
UKIP 5
Labour had incumbancy in Betty Williams in Bangor, but that may have voted PC when the nationalists won Conwy in 1999.
Labour will still come 2nd because this seat combines their best bits of Caenarfon and Conwy. Its possible that the Tories might have taken according to Matt on the old Caenarfon boundaries, but only just.
Plaid Cymru Alun Ffred Jones 10,260 52.4
Labour Martin Eaglestone 5,242 26.8
Conservative Gerry Frobisher 1,858 9.5
Liberal Democrat Mel ab Owain 1,424 7.3
UKIP Elwyn Williams 789 4.0
Majority 5,018 25.6
Turnout 19,573 49.1
Plaid Cymru hold
Arfon first voted on the new boundaries in 2007, bit like the new 18 Ulster seats voting ahead of the 1997 general election.
Cardiff Bay is more Plaid than Westminster so I would be surprised if the Plaid majority was greater than 15% (10 – 15% is most likely). Labour also had nearly three times the votes of the Conservatives so they will do well to get 60% of the Labour vote.
I’m a bit surprised by Matt’s prediction.
But he may know the area.
I know Labour has has some very bad results in Wales 2007-2009, including here, but I don’t think it’s a pattern of one party like the Tories or PLC taking all the extra votes, so it indicates that a chunk of it is a loosely focused anti-government mid-term vote.
I think Pl C will gain this by about 12% majority.
The LD vote may be below 10%.
As someone who knows this constituency very well indeed I’m completely confident in saying the Plaid victory here will almost certainly be more than the 10%-12% mentioned above. It’s very difficult to convey just how much the Labour party have declined in the area, but I can assure you it’s huge.
Even in a Westminster context the Plaid victory here should be somewhere nearer to 20% – and it could easily be higher.
I cannot see any other result than a PC “gain”. Majority about 16%. No tactical voting necessary.
Which seats have included Bangor?
It was in the Caernarvon District from 1885-1950 which was of course Lloyd George’s seat for most of that period but ended its days as a Conservative seat as they gained it at the 1945 general election. It then formed part of the Conway seat from 1950 when Caernarvonshire was reconfigured as two county seats rather than the one borough and one county seat that had existed before.
Labour won Conway in the first contest in 1950 defeating David Price-White who had won Caernarvon district in 1945. There can’t be many Conservative MPs who gained a seat in 1945 and lost at the following election.
I’d say he was unique Pete. I think the only other seat gained by the Conservatives in 1945 was Caithness & Sutherland, wasn’t it?
I thought there were maybe a few other Liberal seats but would have to check. Certainly I dont think any others that were gained then would have been lost in 1950 (though it was not the same seat in this case)
Barnstaple and Berwick on Tweed were also Conservative gains in 1945. All these seats the Liberals had won in a straight fight with the Tories in1 935 and it was largely down to a Labour intervention in each case that the Conservatives won in 1945
‘the only other seat gained by the Conservatives in 1945 was Caithness & Sutherland’
As I have said on the Yorkshire East thread, Caithness in 1945 saw the defeat of the then-Liberal leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair. The victorious Conservative was Eric Gandar Dower, who gained the seat with a majority of just 6 in the tightest ever three-way marginal – just 61 votes separated him from the third-placed Sinclair.
Don’t think it was the narrowest result in that election though. IIRC the Tories held Worcester by just 4 votes. However I’m sure that, had the seat been drawn as it is today, that too would have been a Labour gain. Perhaps Harry or Pete could comment.
Elwyn Williams is now showing as UKIP candidate for both here and Ceredigion
If any UKIP candidates stand and actually deliver nomination papers in more than one constituency, one of the other parties should object to their nomination papers.
Smokey Jones – I think Rev David Braid stood in several seats last time.
I suspect its more a game of musical chairs, with candidates switching seats, but the website not getting correctly updated
PC Gain= 3,000 maj
I would have put the PC majority higher than that – maybe PC 13000, Lab 7000
Yes I tend to agree with Matt.
Incidentally Matt; along with Shaun I mentioned you favourably in despatches, as someone who actually makes an attempt to stick to the topic of polls and uses common sense in doing so. Certain people here have gone very off-topic……..
Aww thanks Barnaby, and may I say that unlike some other Labour posters, your posts are decent and sensible, as are your predictions
Any chance of Labour doing badly enough to come 3rd here? As Conservative “target” 195 (though I suspect it’s less likely to go blue than English seats in the 196-200+ range) could they finish ahead of Labour here?
IMHO no
No I don’t think so either. PC GAIN, Labour second. Perhaps about 5,000 behind or so.
There’s absolutely no chance whatsoever of Labour coming 3rd here, or the Tories 2nd.
In a 1997-style year Labour may well win here, but changes in the political nature of the area would suggest that Arfon will be quite solid Plaid Cymru territory for the forseeable future.
Second place could turn on which other candidate can speak Welsh fluently.