Britiske swingers

Jeg har lagt inn en kommentar på en kort sak i The Economist - "Swinging Britain: Britain's conservatives will need a huge swing on election day".

Utopian Realism wrote: Apr 7th 2010 9:23 GMT .ExDub wrote (Apr 6th): For non-British readers it would be useful to explain what "swing" is. I'm assuming it's the difference between the Conservative and Labour percentage popular vote; am I right?

Swing means the movement of voters (in percentage) since the last election. So, a 4 % swing to Labour means 4 % of the total mass of voters have gone from the conservatives to Labour. A 7 percent swing to the conservative side (which is needed if the conservatives are to achieve majority in parliament) means the conservatives needs 7 % of the voting populace (those who did in fact vote) to go from Labour (2005) to them (2010).

So, the swing is NOT equal to the difference between the Conservative and the Labour percentage of the total votes. This graph is rather spotting trends, voter movements.

Interesting material - but not so clearly explained.