---

Voting Statistics

Answer

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician who has been asked to reply.Letter from Karen Dunnell, dated 20 December 2005:"As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question concerning what percentage of the population is registered to vote in each Ward in Wales. (38272)""I am placing a table giving the requested information in the House of Commons Library.""The closest available geography to electoral wards, for which population estimates are available, is Census Area Statistics (CAS) wards. This geography was created for outputs from the 2001 Census and is based mainly on 2003 electoral wards. It is necessary to convert electorate counts to the CAS ward geography and therefore the electorate counts are not necessarily consistent with data published elsewhere.""The latest available population data available at ward level is for mid-2002, published in April 2005. The ward electorate counts are for December 2002 parliamentary electors, including attainers. No adjustment has been made to reflect the difference between these two timepoints. There are a number of wards that are split by parliamentary constituency i.e. they fall within two or more parliamentary constituencies. These are shown by an asterisk * alongside their ward name, and appear under both constituencies (except where the split is across the English/Welsh border). Electorate and population figures for the whole ward are shown. Some wards will therefore be double counted. It is not possible to split the data for these wards.""There are a number of limitations with the data that mean that some care should be taken with interpretation of the results.""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. In addition, people can register in more than one place.""The population data are estimates and as such are subject to a margin of confidence. This margin of confidence is proportionately larger for ward level estimates than for local authority level estimates. These estimates have been published with the status of ““experimental statistics””. Therefore, the estimates, and figures derived from them, should be treated with some care.""Finally, there a number of other definitional differences between electorates and population estimates. Population estimates include all those usually resident irrespective of nationality, whereas the parliamentary electorate excludes foreign nationals (but Commonwealth and Irish citizens are included). Overseas electors are included in electorate data but not population estimates. Comparable ward counts of local government electors are not readily available.""There is a relatively small number of wards (11) where the electorate counts are more than 10 per cent. greater than the population estimate. The majority of such cases are likely to be attributable to a limitation in the methodology used to convert electorate counts to a CAS ward geography, though the other limitations set out above will also have an effect."

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

440 c2808-9W; 38272

Session

2005-06

Related items

Deposited Paper DEP 05/1686
Tuesday, 20 December 2005
Deposited papers
House of Commons

Registered Electors
Monday, 22 May 2006
Written questions
House of Commons

Subjects

Electoral register Wales

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk