Cardiff West 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. Also, however, it is one of eight constituencies in the South Wales Central

South Wales Central (National Assembly for Wales constituency)

South Wales Central is an electoral region of the National Assembly for Wales, consisting of eight constituencies. The region elects 12 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 constituency was created for the first election to the Assembly, in 1999, with the name and boundaries of the Cardiff West Westminster constituency

Cardiff West (UK Parliament constituency)

Cardiff West is a borough constituency in the city of Cardiff. It returns one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system...

. It is 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 South Glamorgan

South Glamorgan

South Glamorgan is a preserved county of Wales.It was originally formed in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, as a county council area...

.

The other seven constituencies of the region are Cardiff Central, Cardiff North, Cardiff South and Penarth, Cynon Valley, Pontypridd, Rhondda and Vale of Glamorgan.

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

From the Assembly's inception in 1999, until his retirement at the 2011 election, former First Minister Rhodri Morgan

Rhodri Morgan

Hywel Rhodri Morgan is a Welsh Labour politician who, as First Secretary for Wales, and subsequently First Minister, was leader of the Welsh Assembly Government from 2000 to 2009. A former leader of Welsh Labour, he was the Assembly Member for Cardiff West from 1999 to 2011...

 was AM for Cardiff West.

Period		Member	Party
	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...  - 2011	Rhodri Morgan Rhodri Morgan Hywel Rhodri Morgan is a Welsh Labour politician who, as First Secretary for Wales, and subsequently First Minister, was leader of the Welsh Assembly Government from 2000 to 2009. A former leader of Welsh Labour, he was the Assembly Member for Cardiff West from 1999 to 2011...	Labour Party
	2011 - present	Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford AM is a Welsh Labour & Co-operative politician, who has represented the constituency of Cardiff West since the National Assembly for Wales election of 2011.-External links:* -Offices held: -References:...	Labour Party

Elections