TURNOUTS for the European Parliament elections have been announced ahead of formal counting of our votes on Sunday and they are about four per cent up on figures for the last European Parliament elections in 2014:

Turnouts figures announced on Friday are:

Flintshire – 35.7 per cent (2014 turnout – 31 per cent)

Wrexham – 34 per cent (2014 – 29.5 per cent)

Cheshire West and Chester – 34.9 per cent (2014 – 31.27 per cent).

The votes for 73 UK Members of the European Parliament – four members for the all-Wales region and eight members for the North West region – will be counted according to the D’Hondt system of proportional representation.

They will be counted on Sunday evening but the results will not be formally announced until polling booths across Europe close at 10pm, as electors in some Continental countries vote on Sundays.

Counting for the North East Wales areas will be carried out locally – at Coleg Cambria in Deeside for Alyn and Deeside and Delyn areas of Flintshire, and at the Memorial Hall in Wrexham for Clwyd South and Wrexham electoral areas – and those results will be fed in to the all-Wales count which is being centralised in Pembrokeshire.

In Wales the choice for electors last Thursday was between candidates representing the following parties: Brexit Party, Change UK, Greens, Plaid Cymru, UKIP, Welsh Conservatives, Welsh Labour and Welsh Liberal Democrats.

Nathan Gill MEP, formerly of UKIP and now of the Brexit Party, and Jill Evans MEP representing Plaid Cymru are both seeking re-election in Wales but Derek Vaughan MEP (Welsh Labour) and Kay Swinburne MEP (Welsh Conservatives) have both stepped down.

The Leader will be covering the results on Sunday evening with a live blog from the Pembrokeshire count which will be running on the Leader website.