The disillusionment of the Democrats' base matters, says Charlie Cook, an electoral analyst, because mid-term elections have much lower turnouts than elections in presidential years, so the party faithful account for a higher proportion of votes.

ECONOMIST: And not about to rush to the polls in November, either

Immigrants account for 19.3% of the country's 7.2m inhabitants, a proportion that is among the highest in Western Europe, and the number is rising steadily despite strict requirements for work permits.

ECONOMIST: Switzerland: Foreign relief | The

Retirements and natural wastage would account for a "considerable proportion" of the job cuts.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | Ofsted job cuts 'hit standards'

In practice such cartels account for only a small proportion of trade, but there is a strong economic argument for outlawing them all.

ECONOMIST: The marriage of trade and trustbusting

Indian and Chinese engineers account for a significant proportion of Silicon Valley's workforce, for example.

ECONOMIST: BY INVITATION: Helping the world’s poorest | The

But over the next several years, high-definition DVDs will become a more important growth driver as they account for an increasingly larger proportion of overall DVD sales.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Though Tutsis account for only a small proportion of Rwanda's population, the most powerful people in the government are all Tutsi.

ECONOMIST: Neither Hutu nor Tutsi, just Rwandan

Nearly a third of YouTube's archives have already made the transition to the open source format, though if you think that's a small proportion, you should probably know that those 30 percent account for 99 percent of all views on the site.

ENGADGET: YouTube starts transcoding all new uploads to WebM, already has a third of its library ready