> Here's another quaint idea. Try reading the report, all of it even.
I did, actually. Found it quite unconvincing -- an exercise in tendentious, parti-pris statistical thumbsucking.
The case is based on unfounded assumptions -- such as that increase in turnout *had* to be correlated with A's victory, or that people who didn't vote "conservative" in 2005 wouldn't have voted "conservative" (whatever these broad-brush categories are supposed to mean) in 2009. (Cf. 1964 and 1972 in the US.) And the argument against cross-provincial travel is flimsy in the extreme -- "no population centres near provincial borders" -- as if summer travel were a Gaussian random walk from home.
It's exceedingly contrived and insubstantial. A classic instance of reasoning back from what you *want* to be the case, if not an exercise in deliberate propagandistic mendacity.
Not at all surprising from Chatham House, given the institutional background.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org