Pick-and-mix of electoral statistics we’ve come to expect

Published: 1 April, 2010

• I READ with interest Conservative candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, Chris Philp, exclaiming that he only needs an extra one in 15 voters in order for him to win the seat.
On the surface, an encouraging figure for him (‘We only need one in 15 to change their minds and we win’, March 25).
The figure Cllr Philp is quoting is from the notional 2005 general election result (which can be seen at www.ukpollingreport.co.uk) which, indeed, shows that he needs a swing of 6.5 per cent (or one in 15) in order to beat Glenda Jackson at the polling booth.
However, the same figures show that his rival, Ed Fordham of the Liberal Democrats, needs less than one per cent of the vote to win this election – only 474 votes in total.
All the election messages that Cllr Philp has sent out so far have proclaimed that he is the only person that can beat Labour in this seat. However, his sudden use of this statistic (which he referred to as “dodgy” in a recent pamphlet) calls this claim into account.
If the figures are as “dodgy” as he says, why is he so quick to use them when they suit his purposes?
If these figures are not “dodgy”, as his (and the BBC’s, Sky News’, and Conservative HQ’s) recent use of them would suggest, then how does Cllr Philp continue to believe he has any chance of winning this election? This seat is a marginal between the Labour incumbent and a Lib Dem prospective candidate. Being seven per cent behind the leader, in a one per cent marginal, does not put a candidate in the contention, let alone place them as the “sole person to remove an incumbent”.
To pick and mix statistics to suggest otherwise is exactly what we have come to expect from the blue/red parliamentary system!
JACK HOLROYDE
Address supplied