More runes to read

Tweet I'm always sceptical about placing too much faith in opinion polls, even if they contain what looks like good news. Today's poll, even though it suggests that the result in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire might now be different – in my favour – is no exception.

The first problem we have in Wales is that there are so few Wales-only polls – or even UK polls with a sufficiently large Welsh sample to draw any sensible conclusions. The second, as Richard Wyn Jones points out, is that Welsh polls seem to have an inbuilt bias, for some reason which is not properly understood. And the third is that we have clearly seen that voting patterns for the Assembly elections and Westminster elections can be significantly different.

Given all of that, what, if anything, does the latest poll tell us? I think it suggests fundamentally that there has been very little movement overall since last May, but that what movement has occurred has been away from the opposition parties in the Assembly towards the governing parties. Given the extent to which Labour has plummeted in the polls for a Westminster election over the same period, that is quite an interesting finding in itself. And it's worth noting that the poll was conducted in September, before the latest Brown come-back.

It also suggests, even if in an exaggerated fashion, that the appeal of David Cameron's Tories is considerably weaker in Wales than elsewhere in the UK. That probably comes as a surprise to few Welsh politicians, but may mean that the General Election results will come as something of a shock to some members of the English Conservative Party in Wales.

For me, I suppose my biggest immediate challenge is how to persuade people to vote in the Westminster election in the same way that they plan to vote in the Assembly election…