Number crunching!

Emmanuel Macron is president elect of France. Phew! What a relief! Things could be worse. But they could also be better. It all depends on how youblook at it.

Here come some statistics:

Macron got 58.51% of the votes cast - 43.63% of the total number of registered voters.

Marine Le Pen got 30.01% of the votes cast - 22.38% of the total number of registered voters.

So less than half of the people who could have voted actually voted for Macron. And claims that almost a third of voters favoured Le Pen look less true when you see that in fact it's just over one fifth.

But then, statistics are always subject to manipulation. Spin doctors use the figures that suit them, as do we all to some extent. The difference is that most of us don't get to put OUR figures out there to influence people.

A thought struck me as I watched the TV news last night and the camera showed the exterior of the Élysée palace. When a new president of the USA ives into the White House we hear quite a lot about how the decor will be changed, what colour scheme will be chosen, which works of art the new POTUS will choose to hang on the walls. Does the same thing happen when a new president of France moves into the Élysée? (And what about 10 Downing street, for that matter?)

My knowledge of the interior of both these presidential residences comes from TV series: the West Wing for the White House and Hommes de l'Ombre (Spin is its English title). But somehow I imagine the Élysée to be very Frenchly unchanging, an institution to which the (p)resident has to adapt. After all, to my knowledge it's only in recent times in France that they have taken to referring to the French president's wife as the First Lady. Formerly we hardly heard of her. It's not all that long ago that French presidents managed to keep their extra-marital affairs as strictly private matters. And now, everything is known, almost before it happens!

And so now we wait to see what happens next in France. How will Macron manage to form a government as his party has no MPs yet and, what is more, as president elect he has distanced himself from the party he created? Interesting times for all!

I have some more figures to play with.

In the UK local council elections last week - was it really only last week? - Labour lost control of Glasgow, among other losses. Much was made of the Glasgow results in the press. Great defeat for Labour! Resurgence of the Tories! And so on! Then someone drew my attention to details of the Glasgow election results.

Number of councillors in Glasgow after the election:

 SNP 39
 Labour 31
 Conservatives 8
 Green 7

Quite clearly Labour in Glasgow has not "collapsed" and the Tories have not had a "resurgence". There are even suggestions that the SNP are less than jubilant. They wanted over-all control; that was their aim and they didn't get it. Studying statistics could drive you crazy!

And now here is a link to something more disturbing, all about how social media has been shown to have influenced results in the EU referendum, if not other voting situation as well. Whether you voted in or out of the EU, whether you are left or right in your political views, this kind of stuff is frightening.

However, before all this looking at figures drives me into serious depression, here is a little something I came across today:

 "The Conservative Party won hundreds of seats in the local elections. And this is obviously bad news for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn supporters. But media coverage of the results has ignored one crucial factor: none of the people who’ve registered to vote in the recent registration surge were eligible to vote in the local elections. Furthermore, the media glossed over the fact that the turnout of registered voters was only around 36%. "

Perhaps the young people are going to save us!