Ceredigion (Assembly constituency)
Encyclopedia
Ceredigion is a constituency
United Kingdom constituencies
In the United Kingdom , each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one or more members to a parliament or assembly.Within the United Kingdom there are now five bodies with members elected by constituencies:...

 of the National Assembly for Wales
National Assembly for Wales
The National Assembly for Wales is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in Wales. The Assembly comprises 60 members, who are known as Assembly Members, or AMs...

. It elects one Assembly Member by the first past the post method of election. It is also one of eight constituencies in the Mid and West Wales
Mid and West Wales (National Assembly for Wales constituency)
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...

 electoral region, which elects four additional members
Additional Member System
The Additional Member System is the term used in the United Kingdom for the mixed member proportional representation voting system used in Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly....

, in addition to eight constituency members, to produce a degree of proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...

 for the region as a whole.

Boundaries

The area of the constituency is similar to that of the county of Ceredigion
Ceredigion
Ceredigion is a county and former kingdom in mid-west Wales. As Cardiganshire , it was created in 1282, and was reconstituted as a county under that name in 1996, reverting to Ceredigion a day later...

.

1999 to 2007

The constituency was created for the first election to the Assembly
Welsh Assembly election, 1999
The first National Assembly for Wales elections were held on 6 May 1999. The overall turnout of voters was 46.3%. Although the Welsh Labour Party were the biggest party, they did not gain enough seats to form a majority government and instead entered into coalition with the Liberal Democrats...

, in 1999, with the name and boundaries of the Ceredigion Westminster constituency
Ceredigion (UK Parliament constituency)
Ceredigion, formerly Cardiganshire, is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Created in 1536, the boundaries have remained remarkably unchanged for nearly five centuries...

. It is a Dyfed constituency, one of five constituencies covering, and entirely within, the preserved county
Preserved counties of Wales
The preserved counties of Wales are the current areas used in Wales for the ceremonial purposes of Lieutenancy and Shrievalty. They are based on the counties created by the Local Government Act 1972 and used for local government and other purposes between 1974 and 1996.-Usage:The Local Government ...

 of Dyfed
Dyfed
Dyfed is a preserved county of Wales. It was created on 1 April 1974 under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972, and covered approximately the same geographic extent as the ancient Principality of Deheubarth, although excluding the Gower Peninsula and the area west of the River Tawe...

.

The other four Dyfed constituencies are Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Llanelli and Preseli Pembrokeshire. They are all within the Mid and West Wales electoral region.

The region consisted of the eight constituencies of Brecon and Radnorshire, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, Llanelli, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy
Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (National Assembly for Wales constituency)
Meirionnydd Nant Conwy was a constituency of the National Assembly for Wales. It elected one Assembly Member by the first past the post method of election...

, Montgomeryshire and Preseli Pembrokeshire.

From 2007

Boundaries changed for the 2007 Assembly election. Ceredigion remained one of five Dyfed constituencies and one of eight constituencies in the Mid and West Wales region.
However, boundaries within Dyfed changed, to realign them with local government ward boundaries and to reduce disparities in the sizes of constituency electorates, and the boundaries of the region changed, to align them with the boundaries of preserved counties.

The other four Dyfed constituencies are, again, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Llanelli and Preseli Pembrokeshire. They are all within the Mid and West Wales electoral region.

The region consists of the constituencies of Brecon and Radnorshire, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Llanelli, Montgomeryshire and Preseli Pembrokeshire.

For Westminster purposes, the same new constituency boundaries will become effective for the 2010 United Kingdom general election.

Voting

In general election
General election
In a parliamentary political system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.The term...

s for the National Assembly for Wales, each voter has two votes. The first vote may be used to vote for a candidate to become the Assembly Member for the voter's constituency, elected by the first past the post system. The second vote may be used to vote for a regional closed party list
Closed list
Closed list describes the variant of party-list proportional representation where voters can only vote for political parties as a whole and thus have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected...

 of candidates. Additional member seats are allocated from the lists by the d'Hondt method
D'Hondt method
The d'Hondt method is a highest averages method for allocating seats in party-list proportional representation. The method described is named after Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt who described it in 1878...

, with constituency results being taken into account in the allocation.

Assembly Members

PeriodMemberParty
1999
Welsh Assembly election, 1999
The first National Assembly for Wales elections were held on 6 May 1999. The overall turnout of voters was 46.3%. Although the Welsh Labour Party were the biggest party, they did not gain enough seats to form a majority government and instead entered into coalition with the Liberal Democrats...

 - present
Elin Jones
Elin Jones
Elin Jones AM , is a Welsh politician, born in Lampeter, Wales, who has represented Ceredigion for Plaid Cymru as a Member of the National Assembly for Wales since 1999.-Background:...

 
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru
' is a political party in Wales. It advocates the establishment of an independent Welsh state within the European Union. was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in 1966...


Elections

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK