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Consensus Growing for Stronger Assembly
Alistair Cole, J. Barry Jones and Alan Storer
During June 2001 Market Research Wales carried out an opinion poll on attitudes to the National Assembly. The pollsters contacted 1008 people across Wales in a telephone canvass. The results provide a highly positive measure of the devolution process in Wales with 62% now in favour of the Assembly and 38% opposed, a significant shift when compared with the referendum in 1997. Moreover, 49% of respondents supported the strengthening of the National Assembly to give it powers at least equivalent to those of the Scottish Parliament. In addition, the poll shows that traditional regional cleavages within Wales have narrowed suggesting that a more cohesive Welsh attitude to devolution is emerging.
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Professor Alistair Cole, J. Barry Jones and Alan Storer, a
research team at the Welsh Governance Centre, Cardiff University,
commissioned the poll as part of an on-going ESRC funded project
on ‘Devolution and Decentralisation in Wales and Brittany’.
Polling took place from June 18 to 29 with a representative sample
of 1,008 adults aged 16 and over and resident in Wales. Polling
was by telephone interviews, using the Computer Assisted Telephoning
Interviewing system. To ensure a representative sample, interlocking
quotas were placed on gender and region. The six regions used were
North West Wales (Anglesey, Conwy, Gwynedd); North East Wales (Denbighshire,
Flintshire, Wrexham); South-West and Mid-Wales (Carmarthenshire,
Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Powys, Swansea); Valleys (Blaenau Gwent,
Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Rhondda Cynon Taff,
Torfaen); South-East Wales (Bridgend, Monmouthshire, Newport, Vale
of Glamorgan); and Cardiff. An equal number of interviews was conducted
in each region, with the final data re-weighted to reflect the actual
distribution of population within Wales. Interviews lasted an average
of 10-15 minutes.