Voting in a Senedd election is your chance have your say about who’ll represent you and your community at the Senedd. Your vote can influence who’ll be in charge of the powers the Senedd has to shape life in Wales.
Everyone in Wales gets two votes in a Senedd election:
- Constituency vote
- Regional Vote
Find out more about how the Senedd works
Constituency vote
Your first vote is for the person you want to represent you and your local area, known as your constituency.
There are 40 constituencies in Wales, each sending one person to the Senedd.
Constituency Members are chosen using the first-past-the-post system. This means, the person who gets most votes is elected, and represents you and your constituency in the Senedd.
You can see which constituency you’re in, and who represents you using the postcode search on our website.
Regional vote
Your second vote is to choose people you want to represent your region of Wales.
There are five regions in Wales, each sending four people to the Senedd.
Regional Members are chosen using the Additional Member System.
The Additional Member System helps the final make-up of the Senedd better reflect the support for each party across the country.
Here's how the regional system works:
- each party or group has a list of people ready to represent each region in Wales;
- you vote for the party you want to represent your region;
- each party’s total is divided by 1 + the number of Members of the Senedd it already has in that region who have won constituency seats;
- the party with the highest total after this calculation gets the next seat and the person on top of its list is elected;
- this is repeated until all four regional seats have been decided.
Two votes, Five Members
This voting system means you’re represented in the Senedd by five Members. One for your constituency and four for the region of Wales where you live.
In total, 60 people are sent to the Senedd from across the country to represent Wales, and its people.
All constituency and regional Members have equal status in the Senedd. This means the interests of all of Wales’ constituencies and regions are equally represented.
Further information
To find out which elections you can vote in visit the Electoral Commission website: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/which-elections-can-i-vote
