Electoral statistics and the beautiful game
For someone professionally or academically interested (or, like this outsider, with little better to do), electoral statistics are endlessly fascinating. Setting out with the intention of analyzing the performance of the left-wing party-list groups in the May 10 election, I soon found myself side-tracked by statistical curiosities. Look, for example, at how the number of registered voters has increased over the past three elections. 2004: 43,536,028 2007: 45,029,443 2010: 50,723,733 While between 2004 and 2007 the number increased by less than two million, in the succeeding period it rose by more than double that rate. This may not be as anomalous as it seems at first sight, of course, as the number on the register is not determined solely by the birth-rate 18 years earlier but also by the active encouragement to register. Just as interesting are the fluctuations in the numbers of people who actually voted in the party-list elections, and the number of groups accredited or, in the case of 2010, appearing on the ballot paper (the figures for 2010 are provisional, as according to Comelec there is, once the results of the special elections are canvassed, a possible maximum of 30,626,579 party-list votes). YEAR VOTERS GROUPS 2001 15,118,815 162 2004 12,721,943 66 2007 30,056,695 93 2010 29,441,706 179.... MORESource: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100622com6.html |
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