More than 70 councillors in Wales have already been elected as they were the only people to stand in their communities for Wales' local elections on May 5. Nominations for candidates closed last week meaning the shape of the elections is now clear.
Labour is fielding the most candidates across Wales with 859 with the Conservatives and Plaid the only other parties with more than 500 representatives. There are also 668 Independent candidates standing across Wales.
Five years ago, Labour won 468 seats, Independent candidates won 398, Plaid Cymru won 208, the Conservatives 184 and Lib Dems 73. There were also 22 candidates from smaller parties. All the parties have started launching their campaigns for the vote in just under a month's time.
Dafydd Trystan, a former chief executive of Plaid Cymru and academic, analysed the changes from the number of candidates in 2017 and said Labour had 86 fewer representatives and Plaid Cymru 52 fewer. The Green Party has 37 more candidates compared to the last election, as do the Conservatives.
The number of candidates standing for each party
- Labour: 859
- Independents: 681
- Conservatives: 668
- Plaid: 526
- Lib Dems: 284
- Green: 115
- Propel: 47
- TUSC: 24
- Local: 18
- Others: 70
There are uncontested seats in nine out of Wales' 22 council areas. The highest number is in Gwynedd, where 28 out of the council's 69 seats will be held by people who haven't been voted in by their residents. The second highest is in Pembrokeshire, where just shy of a third of councillors have been elected already as 19 of the 60 candidates were elected unopposed.
In 2017, 10.4% of Welsh council wards were uncontested and Yscir, in Powys County Council area, had the claim of being the one ward in Wales where nobody stood at all. The overall percentage of uncontested wards has dropped further this election year to 6%.
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There are also uncontested seats in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Neath Port Talbot, Powys and Wrexham. In total it impacts more than 100,000 people.
Jess Blair, Director of Electoral Reform Society ERS Cymru said it means for those people the elections have been "effectively cancelled" and a new voting system is needed. "Local elections are the cornerstone of our democracy – a chance for local people to have their say over how their local area is run and, importantly, over who represents them. But yet again thousands of voters are being denied a voice with results decided weeks before polling day. Uncontested seats are yet another symptom of our broken First Past the Post system – one which creates safe seats for some candidates and parties but no-go areas for others."
In Scotland and Northern Ireland councillors are elected via a system of proportional representation, the single transferable vote, not first past the post, and they have fewer uncontested elections.
A crowdsourced spreadsheet via Election Maps UK has put together data on all 761 of Wales' council wards and calculates there are 2,433 candidates standing in Wales this May.
Tweeting after the nominations closed on April 5, Mr Trystan said: "First impressions having read every County election nomination in Wales - Lab continue to look strong, Conservatives record numbers of candidates in lots of areas, Plaid patchy. More Greens than ever, LDs even more tightly concentrated in areas of activity. Inds on the wane. On Plaid particularly areas like Gwynedd, Ceredigion looking very strong, RCT & Conwy surprisingly less so, and then areas in the east e.g. Flint, Mynwy, Torfaen looking particularly weak. Cardiff with Plaid/Greens in tandem and working well together could be interesting".
Community council elections are also taking place. There are also a number of unopposed seats for those elections. Paul Matthews is the chief executive of Monmouthshire council. He shared figured for his council area after nominations closed saying there are 297 community/town council seats and 233 candidate nominations were received for 118 wards. Only 17 will have a contested election. 20 wards have no candidate at all.
