Election time is no box ticking exercise

IN MARCH 1907, the distinguished statistician Francis Galton conducted a social experiment that had immense implications for democracy.

- Leo McKinstry

Visiting a country fair near Plymouth, he witnessed a competition where around 800 participants tried to estimate the weight of an ox. After he had told the organisers about his professional interest in numbers, Galton was given permission to analyse all these guesses, which had been written on slips of paper. What he discovered was fascinating. Although most of the entries were too high or too low, the average of the 800 was remarkably accurate, missing the ox's real weight by less than one percent.

Galton's test appeared to reveal that a group of citizens can have a form of collective intelligence if their opinions are pooled together.

It is a phenomenon known as "the wisdom of crowds". On a much bigger scale, the theory explains why the public in a free, open society usually makes the right decision at election time. That undoubtedly applies to the British electorate which, throughout the last 150 years, has displayed an astonishingly intuitive and subtle instinct for reaching a result that the political suits needs of the country.