The way Wales does elections is all about to change. But could it pave the way for Reform UK?

With a 103-year winning streak, Welsh Labour might just be most successful election-winning party in history.

The party has held the majority of Wales’ Westminster seats since 1922, and led every post-1999 devolution parliament in Cardiff Bay.

But could the 2026 Senedd elections end this unbroken run?

The party’s predicted vote share in Wales currently sits at 18%, a new YouGov poll suggests – far lower than the figures boasted by Plaid Cymru (30%) and Reform UK (25%).

Nationally, the first-past-the-post model prevents smaller parties – even those with a significant vote share – from picking up large numbers of parliamentary seats.

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But Wales is different. From 2026, the Welsh parliament (the Senedd) will be elected on a wholly proportional basis, meaning the number of votes a party receives will correlate to the number of seats it secures. 

Current voting intention would see Plaid Cymru pick up 35 of the 90 Senedd seats on offer. Reform would clinch 30 or so, with Labour reduced to a paltry 19. 

The next Senedd could look “very different indeed”, experts told Big Issue. 

“The planned changes could benefit smaller parties like Reform,” says Robin Mann, a senior lecturer in politics at the Bangor University and a member of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data.

“This is primarily because it allows smaller parties to win seats where they have regional concentrations of support even if they don’t win individual seats.”

The reforms will “undoubtedly recalibrate” the composition of the Senedd, said professor Laura McAllister, professor of public policy and the governance of Wales at Cardiff University.

“Clearly the new electoral system and the fact that there will be multiple parties elected to the Senedd across the political divide will make coalition governments almost certain.”

How will the new Welsh voting system work? 

Currently Welsh Senedd elections use a mix of first-past-the-post and proportional voting to elect its 60 devolved parliamentarians.

But from 2026, the Senedd will be expanded to 96 members, and the first-past-the-post element will be removed. Sixteen constituencies will be entitled to six seats apiece, and seats will be allocated based on the share of votes each party or independent candidate gets. 

“We anticipate that a party will require between 12% and 15% to get a single MS in each of the multi member constituencies,” explains McAllister.

“That means that parties like Reform, who are polling above that in the opinion polls, will undoubtedly get representation.”

If we’d used this system at the 2024 general election, the Westminster parliament would look very different. Reform would boast more than 90 MPs, with the Greens on around 45. 

Why are Welsh voters turning away from Labour? 

Surging cost of living and failing public services are eroding support for Labour in Wales. Disillusionment with Keir Starmer’s national Labour government is also driving the exodus: in the same YouGov poll assessing voting intention, some 62% of respondents said that the prime minister was “doing badly”.

Reform UK did particularly well in the South Wales Valleys, where poverty and social exclusion exceed the national average. The dynamic is a familiar one, says Robin Mann: destitution and state failure radicalises voters.

“There is little doubt in my mind that the rise of smaller parties is driven by the decline of the welfare state and the broader weakening of established liberal democratic states in their ability to guarantee welfare and security to their citizens,” he said.

“When citizens feel that the state no longer meets their basic needs – whether economic, social, or security-related – it undermines their confidence in traditional political institutions. In turn, this opens the door for alternative parties, often populist or anti-establishment, that promise, unfortunately, an illusory sense of security and fairness.”

Reform UK’s manifesto revolves around British decline, a phenomenon it attributes less to state failure than to “rampant immigration”. The document pledges a “freeze” on non-essential immigration in order to “take care of British people first”. (It’s worth noting that foreign workers typically contribute more to social security systems in taxes than they receive in assistance, because a greater share of migrants are of working age).  

But the surge in support for Farage’s party shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a vindication of his ideas, said McAllister. 

“Candidates are purely standing and riding the wave of support for Reform at the moment, without actually advocating a particular hard policy platform. Even in England, you know, there’s still a looseness around the policy manifesto for Reform,” she added. 

“I think we need to be careful not to conflate a kind of populist rise in support for reform with a validation of any particular policy platform.”

Additionally, there’s a lack of clarity around Wales-specific policy and grassroots organisational capacity in Wales. The party does not even have a Welsh leader yet; pressed on the question, the party’s spokesperson reiterated that “Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform”.

“In a devolved election, it’s completely justifiable to expect Reform to be talking about devolved issues,” McAllister said. “And at the moment, we have very little evidence or clue as to what they will say or what their position will be on those.”

Will Reform UK lead the Senedd?

The party is undeniably gaining traction in Wales, finishing second in 13 constituencies at the 2024 general election and recently gaining its first councillor in Welsh local government. But in reality, the party are unlikely to form a government.  

“You can’t rule out Reform playing a role in a coalition government completely but I don’t anticipate it,” said Mann. “Plaid Cymru’s support has also increased and so a Lab-Plaid coalition remains the most likely outcome right now. Also despite Labour decline, looking at the polls, it still seems that Labour will gain a plurality of support and it does better with younger people, as indeed do Plaid and the Greens.” 

Coalition government doesn’t suit the “style and logic” of populist parties like Reform, Mann added. Cooperation with the so-called establishment is anathema to their self-styling as insurgents. 

“They tend to want to use their popular vote and threat of further popularity to influence the policy agendas from a position of detachment.”

At present, Reform is far more likely to pick up disaffected Conservatives compared to disaffected Labour voters, and both Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru have ruled out joining them in coalition.

“Most likely I think, is a coalition on the left,” McAllister said. “Then you would be looking at whether Plaid Cymru does well enough to be the leading party and supplant Labour for the first time in 26 years of devolution, which would be a huge blow to Labour and a huge, huge success for Plaid Cymru, or whether it’s the other way around,” she said. 

“But given the status of UK Labour, which reflects poorly, I think, on Welsh Labour and the fact that Welsh Labour has been in power for 26 years – albeit with different configurations of partnerships and coalitions as well – I think it’s going to be difficult for Labour to do well in the Senedd elections.”

Welsh Labour’s 103-year victory record is almost unparalleled. The South Tyrolean People’s Party has won every election in its province of Italy since 1948 – a mere 77-year run. But if recent polling is anything to go by, nothing is assured.

Labour first minister Eluned Morgan described recent polling as a “a wake up call if ever we’ve seen one”.

“It is a serious challenge for us,” she conceded.

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