Despinning the Media - Reuters and Statistics.

Reading about Sarkozy's victory in France this morning and I came across this "women and children hardest hit" piece from the "news" organization Reuters. It's the woe story of how a female candidate got shuned by female voters...classic Lefty identity politics.

Gehmlich's failure to grasp math comes to light in this passage:

Only 48 percent of women voted for Royal, according to an Ipsos poll conducted on election day on Sunday, while 52 percent supported rightist rival and overall winner Nicolas Sarkozy.

Horrible, isn't it? A 4% difference. How did Sarkozy pull off such a coup? Well, this story shows the winning percentages as

Sarkozy, a pro-American conservative and an immigrant's son, defeated Socialist Segolene Royal by 53.06 percent to 46.94 percent with an 85 percent voter turnout, according to final results released early Monday.

So, wait a second. Royal got 48% of the female vote and 47% overall...that means she pulled more women, relative to her vote, than Sarkozy. Truthfully, it's a statistically meaningless difference, but Reuters always puts their agenda ahead of facts so don't be surprised.

The real story that you can take from this is French voters voted on issues, on jobs, and items dear to France. Not on the smear-identity politics the fuels the Left.