YouTube for intellectuals

Fora.tv is the Web site for intellectually inclined YouTube viewers (i.e. the sort of people that read this blog). This is a smart site. Beautifully created. Have a look at this highlights video of Robert Shapiro talking about the how economies around the world will react to the aging of the baby boom generation. Dick Stroud

Boomers and cars

Has anybody notice that the price of petrol has increased? What a daft question.

As the pump price climbs ever higher and the population ages, U.S. road traffic is falling—and so is fuel consumption

In 2007 the traffic in Palm Beach Florida decreased. It's not just Palm Beach. Traffic levels are trending downward though much of the US. Preliminary figures from the Federal Highway Administration show it falling 1.4% last year. That would be the first annual decline since 1991.

There are lots of explanations for this decline in road transport. Most people seem agreed that a significant contributing factor is the fact that US baby boomers are exiting their peak driving years. This translates into fewer car sales on a per capita basis. I think this is an interesting example of a mega-change created by the ageing population. Good for the environment – bad for the car makers. Dick Stroud

Trends go on until they stop

Life expectancy is declining in some parts of the US. It is probably the same in the UK.

I suppose there have always been massive differences between the rich and the poor and those with a healthy and not so healthy lifestyle. But since we have been recording ‘healthiness’ it has been improving, albeit in some places faster than others. Not so now.

An article in the New York Times explains what is happening in the US. The US Counties with significant declines were concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest and along the Mississippi River.

The life expectancy of men in some parts of Glasgow is around 70 which means there is over a ten year difference between the best and worst places in the UK.

The horrible concoction of obesity, drug and drink dependency and HIV are to blame for the problems. There are few signs these are going to improve in the near future.

The reason for telling you this sad story is to reinforce the need to understand the details of demographics and not just the headline averages. Dick Stroud

Chase the Silver Foxes

The UK, like the US and the rest of Europe is getting a tad worried about the resilience of consumer spending. More accurately the lack of resilience of consumer spending.

CACI has been analysing the demographics of the UK and concluded that the closer you get to London the more likely consumers are going to be able to plough on through the credit crunch unscathed. The folks living in the frozen north of the country are in for a tough time.

The age group that CACI has identified as most resilient to economic downturns are the over-55s that it terms the “silver foxes” (don’t you just hate these daft names).

This group is 1.5 times more likely than the average household to have an income of more than £100,000. This group accounts for 14% of the population and analysts estimate that they have £23bn to spend on discretionary items, such as clothing, books and CDs, irrespective of a downturn. That is out of total pot of £153bn.

The article in the Observer, where this is all discussed, provides a pen sketch of the foxy rich oldies.

The Silver Foxes are a fifty-something couple living in Epsom, Surrey. He manages the finances; she shops at Marks & Spencer. They are well-informed readers who keep on top of the financial pages. Their favourite food stores are Sainsbury's and M&S, but they also have a penchant for John Lewis.

Most are retired and settled at their financial peaks in pleasant locales, such as Guildford, Winchester and Tunbridge Wells. They are unfazed by house prices as they are mortgage-free and the children have left home. Their savings will be double, often treble, the norm.

I call this group the Charmed Generation. If you prefer Silver Foxes, or rich oldies it doesn't matter - they are a group of consumers that all companies should be targetting. Dick Stroud

London and England have little in common

Whenever I talk with clients, speak at conferences or teach about 50-plus marketing I always make the point that London is very different to the rest of the UK. People nod in agreement but I always get the feeling that they don’t really understand that when I say ‘different’ I mean ‘different’.

London-centric companies and London-centric people tend to have a very distorted view about the rest of England – let alone the wild and woolly outposts of Wales and Scotland.

I think this video from the BBC does an excellent job of driving home why basing any marketing thinking on London is fine for London but next to useless for anywhere else – other than maybe New York. Dick Stroud

Goodbye to demographics

One of the lead articles on the WARC web site is by the editor-in-chief of MediaPost with the title of this blog posting. I quote

My prediction is that 2008 will be a year in which the advertising and media industries finally challenge the role of demographics as the primary method of targeting consumers with media. It is a challenge that is long overdue. Demographics are crude surrogates at best for who a brand's consumers actually are, how they think, behave and, most importantly, how likely they are to actually purchase a product.

I normally say that: “age is a poor proxy for behaviour.” I think I will add the phrase “Demographics are crude surrogates for who a brand's consumers are, how they think and behave”. Take your choice. As long as you get the message.

Sorry, WARC’s site is subscription only; otherwise I would have provided more of the article.

I like the accompanying image. Dick Stroud

Know your U-Boomers from your Uni-Bombers

A couple of consultants at McKinsey, as reported in Forbes, have come with the term U-Boomers.

The U's are the largest segment of the baby boomer generation, sandwiched between roughly 10 million well-to-do households with high hopes for a comfortable retirement and the financial resources to pay for it, and 11 million disadvantaged households that are deeply pessimistic about the future.

They are supposed to have share all the optimism and expectations of their wealthier counterparts but don’t have the bank accounts to live the high-life. As the US (and most of Europe’s) economies head south it is likely that a tranche of the U’s will be joining their disadvantaged and pessimistic compatriots.

McKinsey thinks the Us are a marketing opportunity. As Class 1 Boomers turn left at the door of the 747 their U-Boomer friends turn right. Answer – make the right of planes longer and shorten the left.

I am not sure how marketers will deal with these financially constrained Boomers but I am sure they will find a way. Dick Stroud

Adage is becoming Boomer Friendly

A couple of years ago you would not have expected to have read this type of statement in AdAge.

Boomer Marketing has finally come of age. Yes, the game-changing, paradigm-shifting, neologism-inducing sea change has indeed arrived and is actually living up to the hype. Marketers of all kinds are waking up to the largest, wealthiest, most tantalizing market in history.

Back in Feb the magazine published another Boomer Friendly article. I wonder what has brought about this change?

Here is a thought for you this Saturday morning. Let’s say we do have a recession/down-turn or whatever you want to call it and let’s say it goes on for a year or so rather than a couple of months. What differential impact will this have on the different demographics? OK, take out the very rich and the very poor – their position isn’t affected that much changing economic conditions – but what about the large group in the middle?

When I say “down-turn” I mean shrinking asset values (houses) lower/negative returns from investments and hence pensions higher unemployment, higher costs of servicing debt and difficulty getting credit all mixed together with diving consumer confidence.

Let’s say that you have to give a presentation for the head of marketing about the impact all of this nasty stuff is going to have on consumers of different ages. What would you say? Might be an idea to think through this issue since it is a question companies should be asking themselves. I will publish my views in the next couple of weeks. Dick Stroud

Borrowers approaching retirement owe four times as much as 10 years ago

A new study by Help the Aged and Barclays has revealed that 25% of people are approaching state retirement age with outstanding consumer credit commitments, owing four times as much as their counterparts did ten years ago.

Credit levels are on the increase across all age groups and Help the Aged is concerned about the impact this will have on pensioner poverty as new retirees face the double whammy of living on a fixed income while managing existing credit commitments. The report shows that unlike borrowers in other age groups, older people use credit cards to cover essentials such as the costs of bills or even to buy food.

Half of households headed by someone in their 50s, one in eight over 60s (over 1.5 million) and 4% of people aged 80-84s (about 60,000) are still repaying a mortgage.

None of this should come as a surprise. For the last couple of years I have been reporting that the fastest growing group of people seeking advice about debt problems are the 50-plus. Things are only going to get worse. Dick Stroud

The greying of Mickey Mouse

A short supply of kids but a plentiful supply of oldies means if you are Walt Disney you need to take some drastic action.

With Japan's birthrate in decline, Disney has accepted the stark economics of the new market: the largest group of customers with the money and the time to spend a day on Splash Mountain or Pooh's Hunny Hunt is mostly retired.

To entice this burgeoning segment of society on to the rides the company is offering a cut-price season ticket for the over-60s and has made older people the park's new “core target”.

This got me to thinking of what other kids products might be re-positioned for their grandparents. Baby buggies morph into wheelchairs? I wonder what the makers of Barbie Dolls will do? Dick Stroud

The 50-plus migration from the UK

I have already written about the big question mark hanging over data produced by the UK’s Office of National Statistics. So these numbers should be read with that in mind.

It looks as if a lot of the UK’s middle class is deciding enough is enough and migrating.

The Sunday Times analysed the figures from the Office for National Statistics and found that 574,000 people moved to Britain in the year to July, far outnumbering the 389,000 who left.

What is interesting is the location of where the people lived who decided to leave. Dorset (an English country) is most affected, with four of its local authorities in the top 10 of net-migrators. Christchurch has lost nearly 3% of its 45,000 population because of overseas emigration - this is town with the oldest population in the UK.

“We appear to be seeing middle England bailing out,” said David Coleman, professor of demography at Oxford University. “One simple answer would be that this is fiftysomethings selling up and moving to Spain to retire, but there would also be younger couples moving abroad to work.”

The Institute for Public Policy Research estimated last year that 5.5m Britons were living abroad and that a further 1m would leave the UK by 2011. Australia, Spain and America were the top three destinations. Looks as if the UK is haemorrhaging its middle class, many of whom are 50-plus. Dick Stroud

UK demographics – politics and blunders

The Office of National Statistics (ONS), as the name suggests, is the UK’s master of all things statistical. The numbers it issues drives market forecasts and most importantly the way that public spending is allocated to regions and towns in the UK.

What is disturbing is how it forecasts keep changing - by significant amounts. What you see above is the difference between the forecasts issued in 2004 and those in 2006. It doesn’t take an Einstein to see that the number of 15-34 year-olds has been grossly underestimated. The number of 50-74 year olds has been over-estimated – but not by anything like the same level. This might be because many more people in this age group are migrating. If you look at the discrepancy between the 2006 and 2000 number the figures are much larger.

The most important reason for the increase in younger people is the lack of realism about the level of immigration into the UK and the propensity of some immigrant groups to have very large families. Fact, over 20% of kids born in the UK are to women who were not born in the country.

To say this raises some ‘interesting’ questions is an understatement. Maybe it is just conspiracy theory but there is a growing suspicion that the compiling of the statistics has come under political pressure to play-down the impact of immigration.
It is either that or incompetence. Neither explanation fills one with much confidence about the integrity of the UK’s national statistics. Dick Stroud

€327 doesn’t buy you many pints of Guinness

Research in the Green Paper on pensions, issued by the Irish Government, found that the average net income for pensioners in 2005 was €327. The average weekly income for all households was more than double this at €776. Less than half.

Allied Irish Bank has done its own research that concludes that over 50% of the 50-plus has no private pension and will be forced to rely on the State to pay for their retirement.

These dreadful figures are not that much different from the UK. So much for a land of affluent Baby Boomers. Dick Stroud

What makes an “Age Friendly” city?

A short question with a very long answer, all 82 pages of it. The World Health Organisation has just published a report that defines the factors that result in age friendliness and then evaluates the main cities of the world.

This is an interesting insight into the services and products that will increasingly be required as cities attempt to respond to the changing age demographics.

You can download the report from here. Dick Stroud

Over-60s divorce boom

The only age group to show a rise in the divorce rate last year was the over-60s, the Office for National Statistics announced on August 31, 2006.

Whilst the divorce rate in England and Wales fell by 8% overall last year to its lowest level since 2000, there was an increase of 2% in the number of women aged 60 and over divorcing. There is further coverage of the story on the Saga Web site.
The absolute numbers of divorces is relatively small. In 2005, 8086 husbands and 4671 wives, over-60, petitioned for divorce – (each gender’s figures are listed separately as each party may fall into a different age band). Even so it further proof that the old certainties of ageing (like domestic stability) cannot be taken for granted. Dick Stroud

Northern Europe’s Japan

There is an article in today’s FT titled: Baby boom retirement aftershock looms. The FT is a subscription service but you will be able to access it for the next couple of days.

Finland is on the leading edge of Europe's demographic shock.

Between 2005 and 2020 an estimated 900,000 baby boomers are set to leave the workforce (40% of the total). The over-65s will be a quarter of the population. Go forward another decade and the over-65s will increase 70% while the working age population will fall 10%.

If you are an international marketer and want to look at a microcosm of what will befall the rest of Europe and want somewhere to test your ‘ultra-old’ marketing strategies then Finland is the place.

How the Finnish economy is going to survive such a dramatic change to the profile of its workforce is another question. Dick Stroud

The world is getting older and older

The UN report (World Population Ageing 2007) has just been published. If you live in Europe and want a copy then you can order one from here.

For free the UN provides a load of tables and the Exec Summary.



It contains a lot of terrifying stuff. Here are few quotes.

Population ageing is unprecedented, a process without parallel in the history of humanity. A population ages when increases in the proportion of older persons (that is, those aged 60 years or over) are accompanied by reductions in the proportion of children (persons under age 15) and then by declines in the proportions of persons in the working ages (15 to 59). This leads to the big reduction in the support ratio.

In 2000, the population aged 60 years or over numbered 600 million, triple the number present in 1950. In 2006, the number of older persons had surpassed 700 million. By 2050, 2 billion older persons are projected to be alive, implying that their number will once again triple over a span of 50 years.

Globally the population of older persons is growing at a rate of 2.6 per cent per year, considerably faster than the population as a whole which is increasing at 1.1 per cent annually.

Today the median age for the world is 28 years, that is, half the world’s population is below that age and the other half is above it. The country with the youngest population is Uganda, with a median age of 15 years, and the oldest is Japan, with a median age of 43 years. Over the next four decades, the world’s median age will likely increase by ten years, to reach 38 years in 2050.

Get the picture? The world is ageing big time! Dick Stroud

Boomers Drive U.S. Consumer Confidence

The US’s Department of Labour Consumer Expenditure Survey shows that Baby Boomers outspend other generations by an estimated $400 billion each year on consumer goods and services. That’s a lot.

Are the Boomers a happy and confident bunch? Well not according to the survey conducted by the Boomer Project and BIGresearch.

For each of the last nine months, according to the monthly BIGresearch Consumer Intentions & Actions CIA) study among more than 7,000 consumers, Boomer Consumers report lower scores than both older and younger generations when it comes to their confidence in the U.S. economy over the next six months.

"This is hard proof that today's older Boomers still fuel the U.S. economic engine," said Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project. "Let's hope this wakes up the remaining skeptics who think marketing and retailing is all about the young -- it isn't. Boomers are still critically important consumers."

There is a lot more in this press release worth reading. I suspect the data for the UK would look pretty much the same. Dick Stroud

Austerity Britain

It takes a lot to get a 700 page non-fiction book into the Amazon UK list of best sellers.

Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 by David Kynaston has done just that.

As one of the reviewers wrote: “This is an exemplary social history of Britain in the six years after World War 11, dazzling in its scope and impressive in its detail. It covers the impact of the War and its aftermath on most major aspects of British society: class, health, crime, sport, culture (high and low), work, play, leisure, politics, race, the mass media and much more”.

Methinks there are a load of post-war first wave baby boomers who have bought this book. The past comes rushing back as you read about your childhood world.

This is superb book for anybody who wants an insight into the things that molded today’s generation aged 56 - 62 years. Dick Stroud

High risk France and Spain

This chart shows an Aging Vulnerability Index that attempts to measure how vulnerable countries are to an aging population. The index looks at things like pensions, healthcare, numbers of younger people, education etc...

The worrying thing is that two of the most vulnerable countries (France and Spain) are the top places for retiring Brits, who will only make matters worse. Dick Stroud

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

What the hell has this to do with the 50-plus – I think a lot?

Up until now social networking sites have been perceived (idiotically when you think about it) as generic. The style, content and promotion were aimed at Yoof (other than eons and the pile of eons-look imitators) but the underlying assumption was that a heterogeneous market would be happy with homogenous places to meet and socialise.

We tend to all live spaces defined by class, race, age, and education so why would we want to meet-up in a place where most people are not like us.

Danah Boyd, a PhD student in the School of Information at Berkeley, had the temerity to state the obvious. As she says in her blog: “I suspect that this will be received with criticism, but my hope is that the readers who encounter this essay might be able to help me think through this”.

This is the comment immediately following posting the item:

Wow. ::jaw on floor:: When I posted my article last night, I sent it to some friends and academic lists figuring that it would stir a conversation. I figured that some usual suspects would read it and offer valuable critiques. I was not expected Slashdot, Digg, Metafilter, del.icio.us/popular, Reddit, and other aggregators to pick it up.

Meme flow on the web intrigues me. When I post a well-thought out, well-written analysis, I get a few thousands hits and maybe a BoingBoing mention. So far, I've received 90K hits for this latest piece, the most problematic of essays I've ever shared publicly.

Well Danah Boyd, you look a pretty smart lady to me, even if you like Michael Moore's new film "Sicko."

Social networking is social networking be on line or in the pub. There are the gregarious who want to mix with all sorts but a large number (I would guess the significant majority) who want the reassurance and benefits of being with like minded people. That applies equally to age as well as class.

So what does this mean for the 50-plus? Well eons.com looks to have taken the position of the oldies’ Facebook . Who will be the oldies’ MySpace? Dick Stroud

Boomer Elites = Charmed Generation?

Just when I thought that Focalyst (the US company formed by AARP and Kantar) was on the way out it has issued a press release.

Focalyst’s research has identified a group called "Boomer Elites" - defined as having an annual household retired pre-tax income of $150,000 or $100,000. Almost all Boomer Elites are married; college educated; and live in a residence valued at almost twice that of the average Boomer. This about 10% of the Boomer population.

The UK equivalent of this group is called the Charmed Generation. It is about the same size if defined in income terms but larger if the total wealth of the person is taken into account. You can read about them in this article.

Nice to see Focalyst still has something to say. Dick Stroud

They’re poor – they’re rich – they’re –sad – they’re happy…they’re confused?

These Baby Boomers are fickle bunch. They can’t decide if they are happy or sad, rich or poor, anxious or contented.

Saturday’s FT article paints the Boomers as a self satisfied and self absorbed bunch. The same message comes from last week’s article in the Sunday Times.

Today in the Observer we learn that Baby Boomers are broke, ailing and anxious and another article tells us that: “not everyone can grow old gracefully”.

What is going on? Do we have a generation with split personalities that toggles between ecstasy and despair?

Maybe, just maybe, the research conclusions depend on which group of Boomers (50-plus) are interviewed?

The truth is that Boomers are far too complex for your average journalist who can only deal with something that is black or white (rich or poor, happy or sad…).

About 20% of the 50-plus generation in the UK (I call the Charmed Generation) are doing really well – an optimistic and wealthy bunch. Another 20%, the ones at the bottom of the pile, are far from happy and are broke. The 60% in the middle are, well, in the middle.

I fear we are for more of this journalist rubbish as they try and reduce the emotions and wants of a very large bunch of people into a few hundred words. Amusing it might be – accurate, not. Dick Stroud

Unilever Resuscitates the Demo Left for Dead

What a strange headline in Advertising Age. The tag line explains: “Marketer Spies Goldmine in the Often-Overlooked Baby-Boomer Consumer”.

As I discussed in my blog posting about the Unilever’s latest research, this big daddy of the cpg business, is taking an interest in the Boomer generation.

Here are some quotes from the Advertising Age article.

When Unilever researchers started looking into the shopping patterns of baby boomers, many of its younger marketing executives wondered why. After all, the average baby boomer seems more likely to have a hearing aid tucked in his or her ear than an iPod earbud.

The median age of baby boomers -- born between 1946 and 1964 -- is now roughly 52, well past marketing's conventional threshold of demographic relevance. The oldest of the cohort are four years from traditional retirement age.

"When we first started launching this project internally, we received e-mails from some of our younger colleagues asking, 'Who cares about these people?'" said Mike Twitty, senior group research manager-shopper insights for Unilever. "They talked as if boomers were already over the hill and not very important.

Their contention was that they don't buy a lot of our products. It was just that knee-jerk reaction that does not reflect the data." The reason Unilever researchers launched the boomer project was to show its own marketing executives that "you've got to continue to think about this target," said Eileen Kozin, director-consumer futures. "It's a huge target, and they're not going away. They're still going to be influential as they get older, and they've got the money to spend." Many boomers are actually early adopters of new technology and switchers to new brands, Ms. Kozin said. "Younger people may be more excited and write about it," she said. "But boomers have the money to spend on it."

OK, did you get that last quote? It is worth repeating - "But boomers have the money to spend".

Now if Unilever gets the message how comes so many of industry minnows are still floundering around in the evaporating pools of youth spending. Because they are dumb – that’s why. Dick Stroud

Why 45?

The UK’s Office of Communications (OFCOM) has a reputation as a great (as in prolific) producer of reports. This week another bit of research hit the streets. This time about the UK’s Communications Market at a Regions level.

Anything you want to know about regional distribution of radio, TV, Internet and mobile usage you will find it on the OFCOM web site.

The diagram is taken from the section about the telecoms market.

What a staggering waste of money and time. Why in the name of ***** do they produce this idiotic age analysis (under and over 45 years old). What is it supposed to tell us? Why 45?

Somebody in OFCOM has decided that the best proof that their vast sum of state funding that the organisation consumes, is serving the national good, is to produce lots of reports. Sadly, they are probably right. Dick Stroud

Yoof has never had it so bad?

Where did all go wrong? Please excuse a rather grumpy blog posting about the differences in life expectation of the young and their parents.

I have just finished my weekly read of the Economist that contained an article about the state of marriage in the US (The frayed knot). Sorry, no link, it is subscription only.

The basic conclusion is that marriage and stability of families is alive and well amongst the better educated and wealthier strata of society and going into free fall amongst the poor classes.

Look at chart showing how the gap between the numbers of single parents increased since the end of the Boomer era for all levels of parental education but primarily amongst those with the lowest educational attainment. The only positive thing you can say is that it looks like the difference was beginning to tail-off.

At the same time I read another report that looks at the healthiness (or not) of social mobility in the US. As a group, today’s 30 somethings have on average 12 % less income than their fathers’ generation at the same age. This suggests the up-escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well.

A third report, from Visa USA, provides a slightly rosier view of the young.

I am sure if I dug around I would find data showing a similar, if not worse situation in the UK.

For the first time ever, the family cohesion, wealth, income and health of today’s young looks like it is worse than that of their parents. That’s not good. Dick Stroud

Marketing Week article about the Charmed Generation

My latest article about the Charmed Generation is published in this week’s Marketing Week magazine. You can read a more detailed explanation of this generation in this article. Dick Stroud

What a difference 12 years makes

In the 1958, midwives across Britain were charged with identifying every one of the 17,000 children born in one week. Then, with their parents' permission, they started tracking what the children experienced in their lives from that moment on. These people are now aged 49 years.

For nearly half a century social scientists have scrutinized every aspect of their lives from childhood and adolescence through their teenage years and into adulthood.

The study was so successful that in 1970 it was repeated with another 17,000 babies (they are now 37 years) and then, in 2000, another 18,000. Details about their hobbies, friendships, aspirations, education, careers, health and love lives have been used to build up the most detailed picture of three generations ever created.

This is an astonishing social research project and provides an insight into the changing behavior of Brits. It is pity they did not start the experiment a decade earlier.

The above chart illustrates the difference that 12 years between their births makes to their behavior. Dick Stroud

‘Averages’ are misleading and dangerous (Part 2)

New population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that in 2006, the U.S. minority population topped 100 million for the first time in U.S. history. What is of more interest is way minorities are distributed across age groups. Click on image to view in a new window.

The new estimates show a growing racial/ethnic divergence between America’s elderly population and younger age groups, creating a new kind of generation gap in the United States. While the large majority of people over age 60 are non-Hispanic white, a substantial and growing proportion of young people are racial or ethnic.

For the next decade or so the US will have a predominantly non-Hispanic white older population being served by people from minority groups. The UK has exactly the same issue.

Come 2030 both groups are being to have a similar age profile.

Another example showing where just knowing the 'average' is next to useless. Dick Stroud

‘Averages’ are misleading and dangerous (Part 1)

The French have just had their presidential election that was won by Sarkozy by a 53% share of the votes. Sarkozy is a man of the ‘right’ - the loser, Segonlene Royal, is of the ‘left’ - if such political descriptors have any meaning.

Ipsos, the research company, has analyzed how the vote split on the basis of gender, age, geography and employment status.

This analysis gives an amazing insight into French society and lessons that all politicians should consider –particularly politicians in the UK.

The French population aged 18-59 year olds – those who work and pay most of the taxes – overwhelmingly voted for Ségolène Royal, the defeated Socialist candidate.

Mr Sarkozy is now the president of France as a result of an extraordinary degree of homogenous political preferences by pensioners. Mr Sarkozy won an unbelievable 68% amongst the 70-plus and 61 % among the 60-69 year olds. Mr Sarkozy also did well in the 25-34 age group, where he won with a vote of 57%.

Ségolène Royal won among students, public-sector employees, blue-collar workers and the unemployed. M. Sarkozy won among private-sector employees, small businessmen, professionals, farmers and the managerial classes. He won an absolute landslide - 82% among shop-keepers and small business people.

This looks to me like a country with very different generational priorities and preferences and does not bode well for a harmonious presidency. It also shows that an average tells us absolutely nothing - forget that at your peril.

This is a link to the ipsos data and a good article about the voting patterns in the Independent.
Dick Stroud