Sunday, June 26, 2016

Nicola is wrong. Scotland did not vote to Remain.

Now, here is an interesting set of figures.  

Number who did not vote                  1,319,760    33%
Number who voted to Leave              1,018,322    25%   
Number who voted to Remain            1,661,191    42% 
Total electorate                             3,999,272    100%

What does this mean?  Well it means that only 42% of the total electorate in Scotland voted to Remain.  

Which means when Nicola says that the people of Scotland voted to Remain, it’s not quite true.  In fact, it’s complete not true.  58% either voted Leave or didn’t vote.  She should have said was,  "of those who voted, there was a majority for Remain".  Which is rather different.

So Nicola, I know that your education policy is in a little bit of a problem at the moment, but I’m sure that you can find someone to do the arithmetic.

The first minster should not be so fast and lose with figures at at time like this.

3 comments:

TortoiseshellJenny said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TortoiseshellJenny said...

Jenny Preston here, putting my statistics degree to good use. The last electorate total I could find for the UK was 46, 420, 413 in the General Election of 2015. The total vote in this referendum was 33, 551, 983 which is ~72% of 46, 420, 413.

By that same logic, if 17, 410, 742 voted leave and 16, 141, 241 voted remain then ~12, 868, 430 didn't vote, so actually only 37% of the country voted to leave the EU, 35% wanted to remain and 27% didn't vote. So what does that mean? It means that when politicians say that the people of the UK voted to leave the EU, it's not quite true. In fact it's completely not true. 63% either voted Remain or didn't vote. What politicians should say is "of those who voted, there was a majority for Leave", which is rather different.

So did the UK really vote to leave the EU, just like Scotland didn't actually vote to remain?

TortoiseshellJenny said...

Just noticed a typo, that should say 28% didn't vote.