The by-election was caused by the desire of Prime Minister David Lloyd George to find a Parliamentary seat for his private secretary Captain Ernest Evans.

[1] Lloyd George persuaded the sitting Coalition Liberal MP, Matthew Vaughan-Davies, who had represented the constituency for more than twenty-five years,[2] to accept a peerage so creating an opportunity for Evans to enter Parliament.

It is not clear if Loveden Pryse was formally connected to the Anti-Waste League or if he just taking advantage of a well-known political position close to his own views.

[9] These men were Evans, Loveden Pryse, W. Llewelyn Williams, KC the former MP for Carmarthen and Recorder of Cardiff and two local Aldermen, J M Howell and D C Roberts.

[14] The election which followed led to the re-emergence of tensions within Cardiganshire Liberalism, which had lain dormant for years, between the rural areas of the hinterland and the middle-class seaside towns.

[16] He later received the public support of William Harris the organiser of the South Wales Miners' Federation who declared it was the duty of Labour to vote against the present government which, he said, was the enemy of the working man.

[18] Llewelyn Williams picked up the Anti-Waste theme and declared that it was not by returning a tame official of the government that the Coalition could be held to account for its extravagance and its loss of control over the nation's finances.

He would be happy to support the Prime Minister he said, when he got rid of the Curzons, Carsons, Balfours and Bonar Laws who only a few years before had been trying to cut his political throat over the Marconi case.

Llewelyn Williams sought to counter Evans' credentials as a Cardiganshire man by getting his wife to make an appeal to women voters as a native of the county.

Mrs Lloyd George made a visit lasting four days in support of Captain Evans when she was received enthusiastically with bouquets and brass bands according to one source[23] and addressed a special meeting of women at Aberystwyth.

[17] Her campaigning concluded only on election day itself with a tour of polling stations and a last minute plea for votes published in the Cambrian News.

[26] In a letter of support to Evans, Conservative leader Bonar Law also made similar points about the need for national unity and government o be carried on in a non-partisan way.

Violet Bonham Carter tried to raise the issue in a speech at Aberystwyth, attacking Lloyd George for re-endowing the Anglican Church with taxpayers' money.

The many sects in the Welsh Nonconformism found themselves divided between the different candidates, a dilemma with which they were highly unfamiliar[29] and perhaps this lack of unity served to lessen the profile and importance of the disestablishment tradition.