Despite improving its share of votes, Plaid Cymru has won the same 3 seats -Afon, Dwyfor Meirionnydd and Carmathen East & Dinefwr- it had already captured in 2010. The Welsh pro-independence party was targeting the Ynys Môn seat, but Labour has held it by just over 200 votes.

Plaid's share of votes yesterday stood at 12.1%, up from 11.3% five years ago. The party thus retains its place as Wales's fourth strongest party, behind Labour (36,9%), the Conservatives (27.2%) and UKIP (13.6%).

The Welsh Assembly is scheduled to be devolved some powers from Westminster in the areas of ports, energy and autonomy of the Assembly itself, as the Conservatives have vowed in their manifesto. It is also expected that Wales calls a referendum on whether the Welsh Assembly should be responsible on income tax powers.

Sinn Féin loses 1 of 5 seats

Sinn Féin was defeated in the Fermanagh & South Tyrone constituency, which was won by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) by a margin of 1%. The votes received by the other Irish nationalist party (the Social Democratic and Labour Party, SDLP) would have allowed Sinn Féin to hold the seat.

Out of 18 Northern Irish seats, the unionists have secured 11 (DUP 8, UUP 2, independent candidate Sylvia Hermon 1). The remaining 7 seats have been retained by the Irish nationalists (Sinn Féin 4, SDLP 3), whose combined vote has fallen slightly below 40%, a decrease of 3.6% when compared to the 2010 results.

Cornish autonomist vote stable

Vote to Cornwall's autonomist party Mebyon Kernow (MK) remained fairly stable in yesterday's election. The party won no seats. Its best result was in the St Austrell & Newquay constituency, with 4.1% of the votes. In the other constituencies, MK stood between 1% and 2%.

Five Cornish constituencies were won by the Conservative Party, two of them taken from the Liberal Democrat Party. The result from the remaining Cornish constituency of St Ives remains unknown, but the Libdems are likely to retain it.

North England regionalists' premiere

Three regionalist parties in the north of England were yesterday running candidates to a UK parliamenteray election for the first time ever. None of them won a seat.

Yorkshire First received some 7,000 votes in 14 constituencies where it ran candidates. If this result is extrapolated to the whole of Yorkshire, the party says it would have received 29,000 votes, ahead of 19,000 it got in the 2014 European election.

The Northern Party obtained worser results in the five constituencies where it ran candidates, with shares of votes between 0.1% and 0.5%, not even gathering 1,000 ballots.

The Party of the North East did better, with shares of votes between 0.8% and 2.3% in the four districts where it had candidates, and a few more than 2,000 votes.

Moreover, in the south of England the Wessex Regionalist Party was contesting one seat, where it stood at 0.2%.

The English Democrats, runing 30 candidates and demanding an autonomous assembly for England, received just over 6,000 votes in total.

(Image: Martin Pollard).