At last!
An election barchart in which the length of the bars plotted is proportional to the votes displayed, as verified by Spurtle's 'ruler against the screen' test.
This one, from Labour's Gordon Munro, even has helpful dashed lines to help show the heights of the bars.
It's as though Labour Party activists had the novel idea of using a spreadsheet to draw the graph – or perhaps they were mindful of our previous articles about dodgy election bar charts, all of which have been Conservative so far (8.5.17; 11.5.17; 18.5.17).
That said, Spurtle has a few quibbles about this chart.
- All percentages have been rounded down to the next whole percentage rather than rounded to the nearest percentage. Thus, the SNP's 40.9% of the vote loses 0.9% to become 40%; whereas Labour's 31.3% only loses 0.3% to become 31%. However, rounding to the nearest % would make the LibDem and Green votes equal on 5%, which would hide the 0.9% lead of the Greens over the LibDems. Displaying figures to 1 decimal place would solve this problem.
- The chart, billed as the 'only poll that counts', is for the last election in 2015. The poll is for the Edinburgh North and Leith constuency (tick!), but in the two years since much has changed in Scottish and UK politics.
Elsewhere in the leaflet there is one mention of Nicola Sturgeon, no mention of Jeremy Corbyn, and two mentions of horses.
Still according to the more opaque latest predictions of Electoral Calculus (dated 28.5.17), Labour can win in Edinburgh North and Leith - with a 12% chance. Electoral Calculus gives the SNP a 47% chance and the Conservatives a 40% chance.
[For more on bar charts and mangled mathematics, see Letters (29.5.17).]
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[Worth pointing out here, that what appears so far is an abbreviated account of a wider, entertaining and politicised Twitter conversation. Go to https://twitter.com/theSpurtle for the full version. As ever, Spurtle has no party-political affiliation.]
That link is: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1069407/poll-snp-mp-at-risk-three-year-low-general-election/