Look at his latest statement:
"At yesterday’s general election the Conservative Party gained more seats than at any in election for the last 80 years."
The intention is to make you thibnk, "gosh, it has been 80 years since a party has won so many seats in an election, that must be a huge swing". Although that is what they want you to think, that is not what they are actually saying. However, I have seen many people tweet, erroneously, that there has not been such a large swing for 80 years. And what is the bet that The Sun will say that too, tomorrow?
Look at the statement again.
At yesterday’s general election the Conservative Party gained more seats than at any in election for the last 80 years."
In other words, the Tories have never been able to gain as many seats as 80 before, (well done, pat on the back). He omitted to say that the Labour party has achioeved much bigger swings. For example, in 1997 Labour gained 147 seats.
| Election | Labour Seats | Change | Cons Seats | Change |
| 1945 | 393 | +239 | 197 | -190 |
| 1950 | 315 | -78 | 282 | +85 |
| 1951 | 295 | -20 | 321 | +22 |
| 1955 | 277 | -18 | 345 | +23 |
| 1959 | 258 | +9 | 365 | +20 |
| 1964 | 317 | +59 | 304 | -61 |
| 1966 | 364 | +48 | 253 | -52 |
| 1970 | 288 | -77 | 330 | +69 |
| Feb 1974 | 301 | +13 | 297 | -33 |
| Oct 1974 | 319 | +18 | 297 | -20 |
| 1979 | 269 | -50 | 339 | +62 |
| 1983 | 209 | -60 | 397 | +58 |
| 1987 | 229 | +20 | 376 | -21 |
| 1992 | 271 | +42 | 336 | -40 |
| 1997 | 418 | +147 | 165 | -171 |
| 2001 | 413 | -3 | 166 | +1 |
| 2005 | 356 | -47 | 198 | +33 |
| 2010 | 258 | -91 | 306 | +97 |
So why didn't Cameron compare his gains in 2010 with the Labour gains in 1945, 65 years ago? Well that may be because the Labour gain that year was two and a half times more!
This is the sort of misleading statistics that we have learned to expect from the Tories. Imagine Osborne manipulating Treasury figures like this? They are clearly incapable of governing.
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Cameron's statement was accurate. Your take on it was not.
ReplyDeleteGiven the manipulation of statistics by Labour over the past 13 years you would be advised to quit while you're losing.
::sigh:: you just didn't read the article did you?
ReplyDeleteTypical Tory, incapable of understanding even the simplest of arguments.
Let's see about Tories manipulating statistics. In the Tory manifesto they compare the productivity of the private services sector with the public sector. The private services sector is banks, hotels, theme parks, restaurants; whereas the public sector is hospitals, schools, police and the military. How can anyone make any meaningful comparison? Yet the Tories were saying: "vote for us because we can draw a graph of two completely unrelated figures".
If the Tories wanted to be honest (impossible considering their DNA) they would compare the productivity of the NHS with the productivity of private healthcare. They don't. Care to explain to me why? (Hint: private healthcare has appallingly bad productivity and cost-effectiveness compared to the NHS.)