Election Night

This was in fact a boring, predictable event. The media coverage was more extensive and more exotic and gimmicky than ever. The pundits therefore started the evening by deliberately generating a false excitement. If they had not, their audience would have gone to bed. So here was the television and radio media guilty of the hype and spin they complain about in politicians. Firstly they suggested that the exit poll, which in the end was uncannily accurate, was almost certainly wrong. If they had been honest and told us that it was probably correct, they would have all been fired by morning.

As is usual the vast majority of seats followed a well established pattern and produced no excitement for viewers. The accepted party won in most cases. Out of six hundred or so seats about fifty or sixty gave unexpected and mildly exciting results. A very few were at all dramatic. Looking at the the BBC electoral maps for 2001 and 2005, they are remarkably similar. This is only to be expected. Any other result would imply a huge shift in entrenched perceptions or major movements of population. The map for 2005 shows a greater concentration of Labour seats in urban areas. The shires are largely Conservative and the Celtic fringes of Cornwall and the Highlands are Liberal. Next time there may be a change of government, which might be more exciting, but the map will be similar. The change will have come from a slightly more drastic re-distribution of marginal seats.

In the light of this, there seems to be little point in starting the media coverage as the polls close. The earliest result is about an hour away and it is only that soon because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The counting can be done speedily with no challenges and no necessity for total accuracy. The media pundits are there to fill a void and will really do so for several hours. No controversial result will be announced early.

An alternative media presentation would be to have a normal Thursday evening's viewing. The election broadcasts would start when the first unpredictable counts were announced, about 4 a.m. on Friday. The small minority of the public who are genuinely interested could then get up early to watch the only mildly exciting bits of the whole process. The rest of us would hear who has won at the normal time of wakening. The BBC website does an excellent job, if anyone wanted to know the name of their new local MP. Of course this will never happen. 24/7 broadcasting means that the media are desperate for anything to fill the air time. Elections make life easy for editors and newshounds. The material is there for the taking.