Notionals 2005 confirmed

[Filuwaúrdjan]

and the area's new districts are basically an anti-Plaid gerrymander.

No more so than the current constituencies are a pro-Plaid gerrymander (according to some people a literal one).
Merionnydd has very little in common with the affluent (for rural Wales) Conwy Valley, and transport linkes between the two areas are pretty much non-existent (and in the winter you can often delete "pretty much" from that). The idea that the Ffestiniog area has anything in common with Betwys-y-coed is just daft.
I can't say I like the idea of linking the Lleyn Peninsula with Merionnydd much, but it is much easier to justify than linking Merionnydd with the Conwy Valley (the links between Ffestiniog and the coastal towns up from Barmouth with the Lleyn are far stronger than with the Conwy Valley; and in this case at least there's fairly good transport links between the two areas.
Further north, the links between Bangor and Bethesda with Caernarfon are far stronger than their links with Llandudno.
O/c Welsh constituency boundaries are frequently horrible; the county/post74county/unitaryauthority lines are far, far too restrictive, bearing in mind population figures.

As for the Arfon notional figures, I suspect they underestimate Labour somewhat; while there certainly is a Plaid vote in the Bangor-Bethesda area, it's smaller than the Labour vote in the area around Caernarfon (o/c voting patterns in this part of Wales are not quite what most people suspect. I will happily make maps of the 2004 elections there if anyone wants. Sadly only Plaid ran a lot of candidates, but the general patterns are interesting anyway).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well... there's a toy train link...

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Dwyfor is what the local council call the area. It was also a name of a constituency in the late 19th/early 20th century (as was Arfon).
 

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Only two wards you could add without the map looking very ugly; and the combined population of the two is under 2,000 IIRC.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Indeed, for Arfon it's a reappearance on the electoral map for the first time since 1910!

Boundaries are different though; the old Arfon stretched out to the eastern bank of the Conwy and didn't include Caernarfon or Bangor, which were in David Lloyd George's Caernarvon Boroughs.
IIRC Arfon and Dwyfor were rock-solid Liberal seats, while Boroughs was a swing constituency until Lloyd George took it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Indeed, for Arfon it's a reappearance on the electoral map for the first time since 1910!

Boundaries are different though; the old Arfon stretched out to the eastern bank of the Conwy and didn't include Caernarfon or Bangor, which were in David Lloyd George's Caernarvon Boroughs.
IIRC Arfon and Dwyfor were rock-solid Liberal seats, while Boroughs was a swing constituency until Lloyd George took it.

I was aware of the former Arfon (created when Caernarffonshire went from two to three), but I seem to recall the third seat was called Eifion.

Yes, I think it was actually. Not sure where they get Dwyfor from then.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Aha! Dwyfor was the name of the district council covering the Lleyn from the '70's until Wales went all unitary. Dwyfor itself is a river near Criccieth; Lloyd George is buried near it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Come to think of that... while Betws is a tourist town o/c, the country around it is sparsely populated, mostly welsh speaking, and ex slate quarrying. (And very pretty.) I'm not sure where the boundaries went exactly though...

The main settlement in the part of the Conwy Valley in the current seat is Llanrwst, but it actually extends further north than that:



The old slate mining (what's left of the industry these days is quarrying, but there are some very deep mines in places) area is, largely, west of Betwys. Biggest slate centres were the areas around Bethesda and Blaenau Ffestiniog.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, that's basically the area I've been to there.

One side of my family came from up there.

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Thought you would

IIRC they are now the only areas in NW Wales with working slate quarries that aren't small scale operations.

Just thinking along those lines, they could always try drawing a constituency that included all the old slate areas.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It certainly feels nothing like the rest of Montgomery; by the time you get to Welshpool, the accents are distinctly Shropshire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Can we look at Clwyd South (I wish they would drop the old county names) and call it Llangollen.

Calling Clwyd South, Clwyd South really makes no sense at all; it's not as though the area has anything to do with the river Clwyd or the Clwydian Range...

Llangollen might do for a name (certainly better than Clwyd South), although I like the sound of Llangollen & Brymbo for some reason...
O/c they could always just call it Dee Valley.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That was Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, not Dwyfor Meirionnydd

Anyways:





Brymbo isn't marked on the map, but it's the area NW of Wrexham.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That one ward out of Montgomery gets shifted out IIRC?

Yeah, but only about three people live there

O/c I don't think that, historically, it is in Montgomery. It's in Powys though. Clwyd South actually has a bit of Meirionnydd in it, btw.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yep, the easternmost (pre-74) district of Meironydd has been in Clwyd ever since.

Well not quite; Clywd was abolished in 1995. It's currently in (gags) Denbighshire...

It's strange that Wales has both the best ward boundaries in the U.K (by law they have to be based around communities and communities are not supposed to be broken up; you can contrast to some of the ghastly wards seen in England...) and some of the very worst local authority boundaries...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yep, the easternmost (pre-74) district of Meironydd has been in Clwyd ever since.

Well not quite; Clywd was abolished in 1995. It's currently in (gags) Denbighshire...

The notional county of Clwyd for redistricting purposes, though.

Heh; true. Here's a question for you... in the '04 locals, one Labour candidate in what will be the Arfon constituency ran unopposed. Guess which part of the constituency his ward his in.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No; a tiny rural ward just east of Caernarfon:



Voting patterns in North Wales can be a little strange at times...