South Wales East 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. The electoral region was first used in 1999, when the National Assembly for Wales was created.
Each constituency elects one Assembly Member by the first past the post electoral system, and the region as a whole elects four additional or top-up Assembly Members, to create a degree of proportional representation. The additional member seats are allocated from closed lists by the d'Hondt method, with constituency results being taken into account in the allocation.
The region covers the whole of the preserved county of Gwent and part of the preserved county of Mid Glamorgan. The rest of Mid Glamorgan is mostly within the South Wales Central electoral region and partly within the South Wales West region.
The region is one of contrasts; it includes the city of Newport, along with the town of Caerphilly. It also takes in the working-class former mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, one of the most deprived towns in the UK, but also rural Monmouthshire, one of the most affluent parts of Wales.