Expat Iraq Vote MSM Spin is Shameless

[Warren Stupidity]

"Nearly 94 percent of registered expats voted in Iraq election: IOM"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050131/wl_afp/iraqvoteforeigniom&cid=1512&ncid=1473


This 'news' story ran all day today. When I first saw the headline I thought, wow, 94% vote, that's pretty impressive, those are one-party dictatorship mandatory vote kind of numbers.

The story goes on to give more numbers:

"Some 265,148 Iraqis living abroad, representing 93.6 percent of registered voters in 14 countries, cast their ballots in the election for Iraq's Transitional National Assembly Election over the past three days, the IOM said in a statement."

But wait, something is wrong here. Last week we were hearing how there were 1-2 million eligible voters overseas, how polling stations were being set up all over the planet for the exile community. So how does 265,000 Iraqis add up to a whopping 94% turnout?

Monday afternoon somebody at AP (Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer) had the same questions, and managed to put together an actual coherent explanation.

"While participation of the registered voters was unusually high, those who registered in a special nine-day campaign that ended Jan. 25 represented only 23 percent of the estimated 1.2 million Iraqi expatriates eligible to vote."
http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2005/01/31/news/news18.txt

Higgins still has to inflate the results as his headline reads:
"About one-quarter of eligible Iraqi expatriates opted to vote".

Actually the real number is 21.4%, which is 'about one quarter' if you squint, but is closer to 1/5 if you wanted to round it off fairly.

Oh. So here is the real headline:
"Nearly 22% of eligible expats voted in Iraq election"

Can't wait to see the spin on the actual numbers on the ground in Iraq, that is if we ever see the actual numbers.

[trochanter8]

1. Are you kidding me????

This will go on for a couple of weeks! It's very hard to avoid.

[Inland]

2. Now you would think that most MSM types would be able to think

of the difference between total eligible and registered. They must know something about the elections in their own countries. Or all our reporters Saudis?

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. Low turnout actually reported by one station (7,ABC local affiliate) here

in MI. Many interviewed said they did not wish to vote in a farce of an election. That won't hit national though, of course.