Welsh provisional boundary recommendations
The English, Scottish and Northern Irish boundary commissions all published their provisional recommendations in the Parliamentary boundary review last autumn. The Welsh Commission, however, was delayed until today as new Commissioners needed to be appointed.
The initial proposals are now available on the Commission's website. On the current boundaries Welsh seats have the smallest average electorate size, and hence they lose the most seats under the new rules, with 40 seats being reduced to 30, a loss of the quarter of the seats. These, naturally, involve some major changes to most of the seats in Wales (and in a handful of cases, the Welsh boundary commission have split council wards between seats).
Having had an initial look over and run notional figures for the new boundaries, my projection is that at the last election these boundaries would have produced six seats for the Conservatives (two less than they won on current boundaries), twenty seats for Labour (six less), the Liberal Democrats two (down one) and Plaid two (down one).
Seats that have been effectively abolished are:
Aberconwy (C) Arfon (PC) Caerphilly (L) Cynon Valley (L) Delyn (L) Gower (L) Montgomeryshire (C) Newport East (L) Ogmore (L) Preseli Pembrokeshire (C)
Although Cardiff Central also doesn't form the largest part of any new seat (the largest part of both the new Cardiff Central & Penarth and the new Cardiff East seats is made of up the current Cardiff South). The following four seats would have had a different winner under the new boundaries:
Cardiff East, which I have as the successor to Cardiff Central, flips from LD to LAB Caerphilly and Cardiff North, the successor to Cardiff North, flips from C to LAB Glyndwr and North Powys, the successor to Clwyd South, flips from L to C Gower and Swansea West, the successor to Swansea West, flips from L to C (though would have been extremely close)
I'll put up some full notionals and some information about the effect the whole of the provisional recommendations would have later on today.
UPDATE: Overall UK notional results for the 2010 general election on the provisional boundaries are CON 299, LAB 230, LD 46, Others 25. The Conservatives lose 7 seats, Labour 28, Lib Dems 11, Others 4.
UPDATE2: There's a full spreadsheet of notional results now available here.
