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Mid and West Wales is an electoral region of the National Assembly for Wales, consisting of eight constituencies. The region elects twelve members, eight directly elected constituency members and four additional members. The electoral region was first used in the 1999 Welsh Assembly election, when the National Assembly for Wales was created.
Contents
Each constituency elects one Assembly Member by the first past the post electoral system, and the region as a whole elects four additional or top-up Assembly Members, to create a degree of proportional representation. The additional member seats are allocated from closed lists by the d'Hondt method, with constituency results being taken into account in the allocation.
County and Westminster boundaries
As created in 1999, the region covered the whole of the preserved county of Dyfed, most of the preserved county of Powys and parts of the preserved counties of Clwyd and Gwynedd. Other parts of Powys, Clwyd and Gwynedd were within the North Wales electoral region.
For the 2007 Welsh Assembly election, however boundaries changed, and the region now covers all of the preserved county of Dyfed, all of the preserved county of Powys and part of the preserved county of Gwynedd. The rest of Gwynedd is in the North Wales region.
The constituencies have the names and boundaries of constituencies of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Westminster). For Westminster election purposes, however, there are no electoral regions, and constituency boundary changes became effective for the 2010 United Kingdom general election.
Electoral region profile
The region is geographically the largest of the five electoral regions in Wales, being larger in area than the other four regions combined. It consists almost entirely of sparsely populated rural areas, with the exception of the mining town of Llanelli in the south. The Welsh language is widely spoken.