English
During negotiations to form a coalition list for municipal elections, a political party’s negotiators mobilize many numbers and proportions in their arguments. The significance of these figures is also negotiated, because some numbers (the election results) constitute the basis for the distribution of seats among parties on the list. The analysis of the mobilization and the contestation of these figures reveals the ambivalent use of statistical arguments and brings us to reassess the argumentative value of numbers in such a situation.
Keywords
- electoral negotiation
- municipal election
- quantification
- statistical argument
- coalition government