Wales is registering voters at half the UK rate — and no one officially knows how many can vote in May
Wales registered 19,600 more people to vote in the two years to December 2025, growing its electoral roll at less than half the rate seen across the UK as a whole, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The total number of UK parliamentary electors in Wales stood at 2,324,400 as at 1 December 2025, up 0.8% from 2,304,800 when the data was last published in December 2023.
Across the UK, the registered electorate grew by 1.9% over the same period.
The figures cover UK parliamentary elections only.
The ONS says it cannot publish the equivalent count for Senedd and local government elections in Wales because its data collection system has not been capturing all 16 and 17-year-old voters correctly.
Those are the voters who can cast a ballot in Welsh elections but not in UK parliamentary elections, as the voting age for Senedd elections is 16.
Flintshire is named by the ONS among six local authority areas where Senedd and local government electoral registration data for 2022 and 2023 excluded 15-year-old attainers and 16-year-old electors.
The other five areas named are Cardiff, Denbighshire, Monmouthshire, Newport and Wrexham.
The ONS says system updates are nearing completion and the December 2026 data collection is expected to include full figures, including 16 and 17-year-old registrations, for the first time.
That publication will come after the Senedd election on 7 May has taken place.
Six Members of the Senedd will be elected for the new Fflint Wrecsam constituency, which covers Flintshire and parts of Wrexham County Borough, in what will be the first Welsh election to use a closed-list proportional voting system.
Anyone in Wales who is 16 or over and not yet registered has until 11.59pm on Monday 20 April to do so at gov.uk/register-to-vote.
The deadline for postal vote applications is 5pm on 21 April.
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