Long Election Night

[davidn]

I think that this is the first time that I've stayed up to watch the results of the UK elections coming in - ironically, being five hours behind the country now helps with that, because they've been at it for about a quarter of a day now and one tenth of the available seats have been declared. The exit polls seemed to indicate that it was going to go pretty much as expected - the Conservative party getting a lot more seats but nobody having a majority.

Highlights so far have included:

• Just about everyone from the BBC News ever coming back for a gigantic sort of news end-of-series special
• Large numbers of people having been turned away because of not enough ballot papers or staff at the polling places - we were behind to America on this for many years, but it looks like we've finally reached their democratic standard
• The swingometer, which this year is being presented from the BBC holodeck
• Pax-Man being tough on everyone right from the start, from as innocent a question as just asking three party representatives what they thought of the exit polls
• One Labour politician almost managing to make it through an interview with him without being sneered at
• The reaction to Sadiq Khan retaining his seat

But most genuinely surprising was the complete non-appearance in the exit poll of the Lib Dem surge that was going to happen. They're still just about hanging on, but the numbers indicated it was far from a seat-grabbing bonanza and maybe even a couple of losses. We'll have to wait to see, but it looks like it's going to be a long time yet.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? Turned away? How is that... allowed? Are those people going to be allowed to write in votes, or, does the constitution-or-whatever over there just say "listen, first come first served, oh well, democracy of the speedy"?

[pookatimes.livejournal.com]

YES WE KHAN!

[kjorteo]

Meanwhile, even if it's a very small minority (13 seats combined, now,) I find it amusing that there are no less than three secessionist parties that are large enough for parliamentary presence (and even came in 5th, 6th, and 7th place, respectively,) and the one for Wales actually gained a seat.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

I was linking people to this (http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/05/04/this-is-how-the-tories-plan-to-seize-power-in-a-hung-parliament/) on Wednesday night.

It is proving to be a frighteningly accurate prediction.

[kjorteo]

Damn you, now I've fallen into looking over the BBC's meticulously detailed and broken-down-by-region results in full political junkie mode even though none of it actually means anything to me. (As of the writing of this comment, Scotland has 41 seats for Labour, 10 for Liberal Democrats, 6 for the Scottish National Party, and a whopping 1 Conservative! This is a 0.1% swing from SNP to LAB! Surely this says... something!!)

Actually, I am a little intrigued that Northern Ireland apparently doesn't have any of the same parties as the entire rest of the UK, with their results currently being 8 for Democratic Unionist (-1!!), 6 for Sinn Fein, 3 for SDLP, 1 for Alliance (+1!!) and 1 for Others (+1!!) Really, though, 1 for Others? Would it kill you to name the other party at that point? There's only one of them!

Aeeeergh.

Edit: Also, I'm throwing this in because no one else has yet and someone has to.