Kieran Lawrence looks at autonomous weapons and the effect they could have on modern warfare
Continuing a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Angela Merkel
Ben Bland examines the fallout from the Iowa caucuses and looks forward to the New Hampshire primaries.
In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
Written for The Yorker's Christmas Advent Calendar by the Politics section
The X Factor has reached its conclusion for another year, and look set to reach number one just in time for Christmas, continuing their dominance of the Christmas number one slot which they have held for 5 of the last 6 years.
But last night, for those of us interested in elections, the real interest was not Jacob Martin’s witty comments (as awesome as they were), nor was it in Little Mix’s triumph. The interesting bit occurred around midnight, when the X Factor production team released the official voting figures for each episode. Often, the only figures we get about elections are from the world of politics, so the information we get from the X factor is fascinating.
Interestingly, the X factor uses a form of the much maligned “AV”. As much as I could write about how use of the AV system in the X Factor displays none of the negative qualities the “No” campaign suggested in last year’s referendum, I shall desist.
The first interesting fact you get is that the “sing-off” massively altered the competition. In total, there were seven occasions when the judges had to decide the bottom two acts. On one of those occasions, it went to deadlock and Craig was sent home, instead of Amelia Lily.
On five out of the other six occasions, the judges saved the act who had come bottom in the public vote and put out the act who had come second bottom. Those who survived thanks to the sing off, despite coming bottom of the public vote were Kitty (at the expense of Sami and Johnny) and Misha B (at the expense of Kitty, Sophie Habibis and Janet Devlin).
Only when Nu Vibe were sent home and Frankie Cocozza was saved in the first week did the judges actually send home the act who came bottom. This raises three possibilities – were the judges bias? Were the judges out of touch with public opinion? Or do the public just not know what works in the music industry? The final question also raises issues for a liberal democracy – can a General Election really elect the best people, or just the most popular?
Another stand-out feature of the figures is the rise and fall of Janet Devlin. Janet topped the vote for the first four weeks, yet tailed off after that, and slowly dropped away before being eliminated in the quarter finals. For those of us who follow elections, it is reminiscent of the rise and fall of Nick Clegg in the last General Election.
He was surrounded by hype and acclaim, and much loved in the newspapers for a short period of time. But soon after he had been built up, the papers knocked him down, comparing him to “Hitler” and making allegations of financial impropriety which were later found to be false.
Devlin also suffered this fate, as the newspapers and judges built her up with phrases such as “voice of an angel”, they then trashed her later performances describing them as “rubbish”. The public seemed to buy it, and Devlin quickly fell out of the race.
Finally, the introduction of Amelia Lily also added a new dynamic which affected the result. Lily seemed to split the Devlin vote, already harmed by the attacks mentioned above, as well as taking votes away from other contestants. The only contestants Lily did not take votes away from seems to be Collins and Little Mix.
Both of these two finalists until Lily re-entered the competition had been floating just above the bottom two, showing little chance of winning. It seems that their vote held, whilst other saw theirs seep away to Lily. This issue of “splitting the vote” is something that has historically been a problem for the Liberal Democrats and Labour, who each took support off each other and allowed the Conservatives to win.
This led to the situation where two acts who had a hardcore minority of fans reaching the final two, as the more broadly popular acts (Devlin got over a quarter of the vote in the first show) dropped by the wayside. It also perhaps goes some way to explaining why ratings for this series have been poorer than last year.
For yesterday's Advent article click here.
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