David Rees on the campaign trail last week in Sandfields East
Welsh Labour have retained their Aberavon constituency in the fourth National Assembly Elections. David Rees, who has held the seat since 2011, was re-elected last night with a 50.7 per cent share of the vote.
But Labour may still have concerns this morning, as their share of the vote was down 13.4 per cent, with gains for Plaid Cymru and UKIP, who came in second and third places respectively, with 20 per cent and 15 per cent of the vote.
The Welsh Conservatives also saw a drop in their share of the vote, coming in fourth place with 6.4 per cent. The Welsh Liberal Democrats netted 6 per cent, and the Green Party came in last with 1.9 per cent.
There was disappointment for Plaid Cymru’s Bethan Jenkins, who had hoped to capture the constituency seat, though she retained her regional seat for South West Wales. Fellow Plaid member Dai Lloyd also took a regional seat.
The other regional seats saw Welsh Conservative Suzy Davies re-elected, and UKIP’s Caroline Jones played her part towards Nigel Farage’s prediction of 5 Assembly members for the purple party, by taking the other regional seat.
Gains for Plaid and UKIP mean long-serving Liberal Democrat Peter Black, who had been an AM since 2007, has lost his seat, along with Welsh Conservative Henry Davies.
Turnout was 42.8 per cent for the constituency seat and 42.7 per cent for the regional seats, about 2.5 per cent lower than the turnout for Wales as a whole (45.3 per cent).
Turnout for the PCC elections was 42.5 per cent. Results for the PCC election will be available after a separate count, set to take place on Sunday.
