Plaid Cymru wins Welsh Senedd elections, ending 100 years of Labour control | Welsh politics

Plaid Cymru has won the Welsh Senedd elections, ending 100 years of Labour dominance in Wales and blocking the momentum of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The leader of the centre-left Welsh nationalist party, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said he stood ready to become first minister and form the next Welsh government, taking over from Welsh Labour, who have governed in Wales since devolution began in 1997.

Reform UK came second, pushing Labour into third place. Plaid won 43 seats, Reform 34, Labour nine, Conservatives seven, Greens two and Liberal Democrats one.

Speaking in Llandudno, north Wales, ap Iorwerth said: “The people of Wales have today decided on the next steps in Wales’s journey. Plaid Cymru now stands ready to take the necessary steps to form the next government of Wales.

“This is a moment 100 years in the making. We have won because we represent hope over division, credibility over chaos, and progress over stagnation.”

He said his name would be put forward to be nominated as the next first minister but – with no overall majority – suggested he would talk to other parties that shared Plaid’s goals to create a fair, compassionate Wales, adding: “Plaid Cymru will press ahead with those conversations with urgency.”

Polls consistently suggested Plaid Cymru and Reform UK were neck and neck in the race to become the biggest party under Wales’s new more proportional voting system. As in last year’s closely watched Caerphilly Senedd byelection, however, the contest was not as close as predicted.

Eluned Morgan, who took over Welsh Labour in 2024, is the first leader of a government in the UK to lose their seat while in office. Speaking at her election count, Morgan said she would resign as Welsh Labour leader and took “full responsibility” for the result but she called for the UK Labour government to “change course”.

Morgan called Labour’s prospects “catastrophic” in a concession speech, in which she said she would step down as party leader, triggering a leadership contest. “Welsh Labour has suffered a catastrophic result. Today we see the end of over a century of Labour winning in Wales. The party will need to take a look at itself, understand the depth of the challenge, and think carefully about what the public has told us … The age of two party dominance is at an end and we will need to adjust to a world where multiple parties contend for power.”

She added that the vote in Wales had not been about Keir Starmer’s leadership, and she “took responsibility” for the people “rejecting Welsh Labour”.

“We owe it to the people of Wales to listen. To understand. And to rebuild,” she said.

Labour’s rout in Wales is seismic, a once in a century political and cultural shift. The party’s rebrand as “Welsh Labour” after devolution was successful on many fronts, for many years: it cemented the idea that the party was distinct and more progressive than UK Labour, putting “red Welsh water” between Cardiff Bay and Westminster. It also stopped soft nationalist voters from embracing Plaid Cymru, and ingrained devolution as the new normal.

However, support for the party has been ebbing for some years, driven by frustration at Labour’s management of public services, which have fallen behind the other UK nations on many metrics. Observers believe Starmer’s general election win in 2024 sounded the death knell, as it left the Cardiff Bay administration unable to blame a Conservative-led UK government for perceived failings.

Pollsters said Thursday’s Senedd election was very hard to predict owing to the new more proportional D’Hondt voting system, which has created 16 super-constituencies, each of which will elect six members; by the time the sixth seat on the list is decided, just a handful of votes could make the difference.

Despite using a more proportional system, messaging that the contest was a two-horse race between Plaid Cymru and Reform appeared to have cut through. The last YouGov survey before Thursday’s election found “stop Reform” was the single biggest factor influencing respondents’ votes, at 14%. The second highest was immigration, at 10%.