Topic guide to: Elections (Local, National and European)

Electoral Roll, Wales

Department: Welsh Government
Shows the number of people who on 1 December were registered to vote in elections.

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Electoral Statistics for UK

Department: Office for National Statistics
There are two tables of UK Electoral Statistics reflecting the number of electors registered to vote in the UK on 1 December 2010. Table 1 outputs local government electors by local government areas. Local government areas are unitary authorities, London boroughs and district councils in England; unitary authorities in Wales; council areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Table 2 outputs parliamentary electors by parliamentary constituencies in the UK.

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Electoral Statistics, Scotland

Department: National Records of Scotland
Electoral statistics.

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Electoral statistics refer to the number of people who were registered to vote if an election had been held on 1 December of the reference year. There are two main classifications of voters; the Parliamentary Electorate’ and ‘European and Local Government Electorate’.

Commonwealth citizens, British citizens and citizens of the Republic of Ireland who are normally resident in the area on the qualifying date and who will be aged 18 or over during the electoral register’s currency are eligible to vote in any election. However, further eligibility criteria for the two classifications are different.

The Parliamentary Electorate includes overseas electors but excludes Peers and EU citizens. The European and Local Government Electorate includes Peers and EU citizens but exclude overseas electors. Overseas electors are not resident in the UK but can vote in a Parliamentary Election if they have previously been resident in the UK and included in the electoral register (unless they were too young to register). They are registered to vote in the same parliamentary constituency as before they went abroad.

People who attain the age of 18 during the currency of the register, who are entitled to vote at an election on or after their birthday are included in both the Parliamentary and European/Local Government Elections.

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A rolling registration system was introduced in 2001 whereby Electoral Registration Officers update registers on a continuous basis. Existing registrations are removed for individuals who have not responded to the electoral canvass for at least the past two years.

For England and Wales, the tables of electoral statistics are derived from data supplied to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) by Electoral Registration Officers at the end of December each year. Data for Scotland are similarly collected by council areas and collated by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). Data for Northern Ireland are collected by the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland (EONI). ONS collates data for the constituent countries to provide UK electoral statistics.

For England, Wales and Scotland the cut-off date for registration is normally six weeks before the election. In order to obtain counts of the number of people entitled to vote if an election had been held on 1 December, a qualifying date of 15 October is applied. If there had been an election on 1 December 2007, for example, those who registered after 15 October 2007 would not be eligible to vote. For Northern Ireland, the qualifying date is 10 November.

The number of people eligible to vote is not the same as the resident population aged 18 and over. There are a number of reasons for this:

• not everyone who is usually resident is entitled to vote; foreign citizens from outside of the EU and Commonwealth, and prisoners are not eligible

• some people who would be eligible to vote do not register

• people who have more than one address may register in more than one place; students for example may register at their home and term-time address although they are only entitled to vote in one constituency in a general election

• there may be double counting if electoral registration officers vary in how quickly they remove people from the registers after they have moved away from an area

• there may be a delay in people being removed from the registers after they have died

These factors have a differential impact on the comparability between the electoral statistics and resident population from area to area.

Changes in the electorate can result directly from changes in legislation. On 1 May 2004, for example, the EU was expanded from 15 to 25 countries. This increased the number of people eligible to vote in the European and local elections. 

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