More people use Facebook in the UK than it takes to elect a government

A bit of whimsical statistical trivia for the bank holiday weekend:

• Number of votes won by the winning party at the 2005 general election: 9.6 million (BBC)
• Number of Facebook users* in the UK: 11.2 million (TechCrunch)

That is a darn good reason to take online campaigning seriously.

* Before anyone starts threatening me with a slide-rule: yes, this does compare apples and oranges a bit since Facebook’s minimum age requirement is less than 18 and also allows people who aren’t qualified to vote to become users. However, unless there’s a very unusual skew in their user base, the broad picture still stands.