Electoral roll: 2019

For Wales (and for England), electoral statistics are taken from data supplied to the Office for National Statistics by local Electoral Registration Officers.

Electoral statistics are annual counts of the number of people who are registered on electoral registers and so entitled to vote.

Main points

The total number of parliamentary electors in Wales is 2,313,900; an increase of 3.8% between 2018 and 2019.

The total number of local government electors in Wales is 2,349,400; an increase of 3.7% between 2018 and 2019.

The total number of UK Parliamentary electoral registrations in December 2019 was the highest ever seen, at 47,074,800. This was an increase of 1,299,100 (2.8%) from the previous year.

Cardiff Central had the highest growth in the number of Parliamentary electors in the year to December 2019 of all Parliamentary constituencies. This is likely due to the large population of students and a high level of population churn in this area.

Electoral roll statistics are based on the parliamentary constituency boundaries and are published for both parliamentary and local government electors. Until 14 December 2011 parliamentary constituency boundaries were the same as those for Assembly constituencies. However, The Parliamentary Constituencies and Assembly Regions (Wales) (Amendment) Order 2011 made changes to the National Assembly for Wales constituency and electoral regions boundaries so that the two are now different (see notes below).

Notes

The Parliamentary Constituencies and Assembly Regions (Wales) (Amendment) Order 2011 made changes to the then National Assembly for Wales constituency boundaries and electoral regions as a result of local government boundary changes in six local authority areas. The Order did not make the same changes to the boundaries of the Parliamentary constituencies. The Order came into effect on 14 December 2011 so from this point onwards there are some differences between the Parliamentary constituencies and the Senedd Cymru Constituencies.

Electoral rolls provide counts of the number of people registered to vote. It should be noted that the number of people eligible to vote is not the same as the resident population aged 18 and over. There are various reasons for this. For example, not everyone who is usually resident is entitled to vote (foreign citizens from outside of the European Union and Commonwealth, prisoners, etc. are not eligible), some people do not register to vote, and people who have more than one address may register in more than one place. Further, there is inevitably some double counting of the registered electorate as electoral registration officers vary in how quickly they remove people from the registers after they have moved away from an area or after they have died. These factors have a differential impact from area to area. This means care needs to be exercised when comparing population estimates with electoral roll.

The difference in who is entitled to vote at Parliamentary and local elections depends largely on residence and citizenship conditions. Local government electors, for example, include those European Union citizens resident in the UK who are not entitled to vote in Westminster Parliamentary elections, whilst Parliamentary electors include British citizens resident overseas who are not entitled to vote in local government elections.

The Senedd and Election (Wales) Act 2020 made provisions to lower the voting age in Senedd Elections to 16, meaning that 16 and 17 year olds will be able to vote for the first time at the Senedd Elections in 2021.

As agreed with the Office for Statistics Regulation, these statistics will be updated at 12.30pm on the day of release by ONS. StatsWales tables will follow in due course.