In a statement released on April 17 Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon declares that his party has shown “tremendous growth in Alex”, achieving a “substantial increase in support in Alexandra” when their candidate in the by-election managed to obtain 15,2% of the vote, “up from 4,2% in 2000”.
What Mr Leon fails to mention is that the Alex total polling percentage in 2000 was 34,79% (15 024 registered voters) as against 6,31% this year (15 280 registered voters). While the DA votes might have increased percentage-wise from 4,17% to 15,13%, the actual number of persons who have voted for them decreased from 218 in 2000 to 144 in this by-election.
One would imagine that voters who support a smaller party where a big party dominates the political scene would show their party loyalty by making an effort to get every single supporter to the polling booths to vote and to increase the number of votes.
Admittedly, all the other parties participating in the by-election showed a decrease in the numbers of persons who voted for them, but the scoreboard still shows that the African National Congress again won the ward with 81,09% of the vote as against 91,46% in 2000.
By conjuring with figures and misrepresenting statistics in this way, Leon almost succeeds in convincing one to agree with Samuel Clemens when he said there are “lies, damn lies and statistics!”. Edwin Conroy, Pretoria