Voting

From today's Observer:

"Given that more people vote to evict contestants from the Big Brother house than in general elections..."

This is something that you keep hearing. It's simply not true. It's nowhere near true. The story I've just linked on the BBC News site tells us that 27,128,130 votes were cast in total the 2005 general election. And that was (largely!) one person, one vote.

Now while the figures are a little out of date, in that there have been another three editions of the regular Big Brother since then, the numbers are not going to have increased fivefold.

And as the BBC piece goes on to point out, TV producers don't worry unduly about people voting lots of times. Indeed they actively encourage it. I've just seen the Strictly Come Dancing results show (it's a guilty pleasure) and they're already letting us know the numbers for next week's vote with the lines now open even though we're a week away from the contestants even dancing again.

Anyway, can we once and for all put to bed this urban myth?