Beyond being political rituals with prescribed rites institutionalising formalism in their conduct, and the Electoral Commission (IEC) managing them, "elections decide politics" (Herzog, 1987:559), there is more to elections than just the casting of votes. Lurking in the elections, as the "social construction of political worlds", is their political meaning (Herzog, 1987:559-560). Their procurement is beyond electoral statistics, which are "too often seen as the end point – the holy grail of research, evaluation, analysis, planning – rather than a step along the journey of better understanding" (Anon., online). As the function of collecting, adding and raising numbers to the nth power to determine parties' electoral progression or regression in percentage points against the histories of their performances at the polls, statistical meanings of electoral performance are not always the same