Carswell's success had led to comparisons with the SDP / Liberal Alliance which swept to a series of byelection successes in the early 1980s.
O'Malley sparked a little more enthusiasm from the crowd of 250, with the kind of stirring, populist speech that hinted at comparisons he might want made with the current president.
Ashcroft found the weaknesses of the party leaders as voters drew laughable comparisons.
When you start making comparisons number by number, that's where you end up.
Politicians sometimes argue that historic comparisons are not fair because many A roads have been "de-trunked" - that is downgraded from the Highways Agency to local councils.
Yet, even if there is still room for improvement, in international comparisons, the NHS remains remarkably cost-effective.
Peston's hair has acquired its own Twitter account and attracted approving commentary in Fleet Street's fashion pages (in this paper, Imogen Fox described his new look as "Mikhail Baryshnikov circa White Nights meets the autumn/winter 2015 Raf Simons catwalk") and comparisons with everyone from Hugh Grant to Tim Burgess of the Charlatans.
The graphic also allows for comparisons among election years, nicely capturing the whiplash from 1964 (Johnson-Goldwater) to 1972 (Nixon-McGovern).
The background information the HDR provides can be used to inform development work and enable activists and policymakers to make useful comparisons.
Last week he found himself at the centre of storm after drawing comparisons between the response to Ebola in west Africa and a measles outbreak in north America.
Video footage of the shooting has gone around the world, prompting comparisons with the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, drawing activists to the city and provoking condemnation from the Mexican government.
