Wales 29

A GUEST POST BY PENDDU

The Conservatives have recently announced their plans to reduce the total number of MPs at Westminster by 10% to 585, but with equal constituency sizes in Wales, which would mean a reduction from the current 40 MPs to 29. They also announced that electorates should vary by no more that +/-3.5% and that boundaries should not have to rigidly follow county boundaries or take geographical size into account. So how might this look in Wales?

Surprisingly, I found it very easy to carve up Wales into equal sized constituencies, which seem to be both natural and logical. I did this using a spreadsheet containing all of Wales’s electoral wards and the Ordnance Survey’s excellent election map system. Then I just started at the 4 corners of Wales and worked in, taking local authority boundaries into consideration wherever practical, but largely ignoring the existing constituencies. My calculations are based on the 2005 electorates, but this could be replicated with more current data, and on this basis Wales’s electoral quota for 29 seats would be 76,745 with a permitted variation of +/- 2,700.

For example, in the South West I started in Pembrokeshire. The County has an electorate of 89,829 so it would be necessary to remove around 13,000 voters to achieve the electoral quota. This could be done by transferring the Tenby area into Carmarthenshire, but it makes more sense both geographically and linguistically to transfer the Preseli area into Ceredigion. This would then create a new seat – I have called Penfro, but this is just a working name and can be changed – with an electorate of 76,067 or 99.1% of the electoral quota.

The Preseli area with an electorate of 13,762 would then be added to Ceredigion which has an electorate of 52,514, and this would give a combined electorate of 66,276. This is still too small at only 86% of the quota, so it would be necessary to find another 10,000 voters from somewhere. I considered extending the seat north to Machynlleth, or east into Powys, but it seemed more logical to take in some of the electoral wards in north-west Carmarthenshire, along the Teifi valley. This then created a new seat – which I have called Teifi - with an electorate of 75,856 or 98.8%.

Carmarthenshire, excluding the Teifi valley wards and the existing Llanelli constituency is getting close to the electoral quota, and by adding some wards in the Burry Port area, a new constituency – Myrddin – is created with an electorate of 100.4% of the quota.

The remaining electorate in Llanelli is only 47,000 which means that it needs to add 30,000 voters from West Glamorgan, and here I propose a new seat of Lwchwr which crosses the boundaries of the preserved counties.

I continued a similar process working in from all 4 corners of Wales, and considering a number of alternative solutions, and arrived at the following proposal.

South West Wales
Penfro	Pembrokeshire, exc Preseli	99%
Teifi	Ceredigion, Preseli & Teifi Valley	99%
Myrddin	Carmarthenshire E & W, exc Teifi Valley	100%
Lwchwr	Llanelli & North Gower	97%
Swansea Gower	Swansea West & South Gower	97%
Swansea Tawe	Swansea East & City Centre	99%
Neath	Neath, Aberafan & SW Powys	97%
Margam	Port Talbot, Porthcawl & Llynfi Valley	99%
South Central Wales
Cardiff East	Cardiff South & Cathays	103%
Cardiff North	Cardiff North & Gabalfa	102%
Cardiff West	Cardiff West & Grangetown	103%
Bro Morgannwg	Vale of Glamorgan, inc Penarth exc Cowbridge	103%
Ogwr	Bridgend Town, Ogmore Valley & Cowbridge	102%
Rhondda Elai	Rhondda & Ely Valley	101%
Cynon Taf	Cynon Valley & Pontypridd Town	98%
South East Wales
Usk	Monmouthshire County & Blaenafon	102%
Newport	Newport County	103%
Cwmbran	Torfaen & North Newport	100%
East Gwent	Blaenau Gwent & East Islwyn	101%
Caerfilli	Caerphilly & West Islwyn	99%
Rhymney	Merthyr, Rhymney & NW Islwyn	98%
South Powys	Brecon, Radnor & S Montgomeryshire, exc SW Powys	99%
North Wales
Gwynedd	Merionydd & Caernarfon	99%
Menai	Ynys Mon, Bangor & Nant Conwy	101%
Conwy	Conwy County	99%
Rhuddlan	Denbighshire Coast & North Flintshire	97%
Flintshire	Flintshire, exc North Flintshire	100%
Wrecsam	Wrexham County	99%
North Powys	North Montgomery & South Denbighshire	99%

This can still be optimised further, but it took me only a few hours to arrive at this solution – so why does the electoral boundary commission take so long?

This solution could also be used for creating 58 dual STV seats for Assembly elections, although I still prefer a solution that is independent of Westminster, with variable sized multi-member seats based on local Authorities.