First – ITV wiped the floor with the BBC in the quality of its election night coverage. A great mix of news, statistics, humour and drama. What has particularly stuck in my mind was a very short, but absolutely on the button, description of what the Virginia result could mean – the home of American slavery helping elect the first black man as President. Informed, concise and moving.
And all done, by the looks of it, on a much lower budget than the BBC’s. Though it pains me to say so – as someone who likes the concept of the BBC, and thinks criticism of it is often mis-placed – the BBC seems to have lost its way badly when it comes to election night coverage.
Second – after all the events of the last four years (Iraq, financial meltdown, recession, ethics scandals and more), after all the Obama organisation, and with Obama as candidate – the Democratic share of the popular vote in the Presidential election only went up by 4%. McCain may have been swept away in an electoral college landslide, but in the circumstances, he came extremely close in the popular vote. The lessons from this are far from clear – was McCain’s error turning into a traditional Republican candidate in the closing part of the contest, or was his error not turning into one sooner? And is the Republican machine actually in a surprisingly good state, or is it about to fall apart? There will be much to keep politicos interested and debating!
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I thought the BBC was an absolute shambles. Poor coverage, dodgy maps that didnt show any detail, and bad sound. It was like an old man fumbling around in the dark. The only good bit was John Bolton fighting a Beeb journo.
CNN was cautious in calling the results as they came in, but had a very intelligent and in-depth programme, and I applaud them for it.
The BBC UK election coverage is a different animal than their US coverage. In the latter they usually rely on a few pundits to talk a lot. Luckily, a lot of us have cable/sateillite these days and I watched CNN – who themselves can be a little fusty.
Obama had SEVEN MILLION more votes than McCain and 6 percentage points above McCain which means Obama got 13% more votes than McCain. Presumably you mean that Obama was four points up on Kerry. Well I always thought McCain was a very strong opponent. He has been very popular for years as a ……I can hardly say it…..mm….m…….maverick
Part of the problem with the BBC election coverage is David Dimbleby. He’s not quite so bad on it as he is on QT, but almost. And their graphics are embarrasing.
Ps to my ealier point – I think we need to recognise that Kerry actually did very well so the 2004 base was quite high anyway.
Dimbleby can’t talk out a mistake. He just fumbles and looks around for help.
The BBC should save money and just stream CNN!
Sky News was better than the Beeb as well.
The “touch screen” was bizarre and ineffective – and presumably not actually a touch screen!
Dimbleby was utterly embarrassing. I tried to persevere, but every time he messed up it was excruciating.
As for the share of the vote – US elections are frequently very close – this year’s margin of 6.5 million is prettymoderately large, historically: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781450.html
Mark,
Yes the BBC coverage was dire. CNN might have been cautious but the BBC was stupidly so (It took them ages to call Florida when it was obvious which way it was headed, they also said things were reaching a ‘climax’ for two full hours and when it did come to a climax it looked absurd, rushed and forced). As regards popular vote…ye, I agree…this is why i have tried to avoid the term ‘landslide’ to describe the Obama victory…it was only half of one…
McCain polled more votes than Reagan in 1984
In terms of the networks, I was switching mainly between MSNBC and CNN online, with the BBC on the telly. Both the American networks were far superior to the Beeb, but MSNBC were by far the best. CNN were rather slow in calling some results and didn’t have as much on-screen statistical information as MSNBC. CNN’s analysis was so-so, but MSNBC’s was much sharper.
CNN was great, particularly when they beamed a correspondent in by hologram, and because they had commentators called Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash.
Fox was hilarious – they seemed to spend all night talking about how disastrous Obama would be as President, while flashing up McCain holds Kentucky…
Let’s all just be glad Jeremy Vine wasnt shooting bean cans again…I wonder what are the chances of Gordon Brown making a complaint about this??
The Libertarian Party cost McCain Indiana and North Carolina.
Three cheers for Bob Barr!
According to the exit polls those contacted personally by BOTH campaigns broke for McCain by 4%. Those contacted by just one broke about 80/20 for that candidate – but more than twice as many were contacted by Obama only than by McCain only.
That would suggest that it was the scale of the Obama ground campaign that matter not it’s quality. And that mobilising more people to take part was crucial. Lessons for the UK?
Mark, Obmama won by around 7 million votes and more than 5%. that’s likely to get bigger too when all the totals from the West Coast are added up. I dont think that’s extremely close in the popular vote, as you say.
I was surprised that ITV was even bothering with an election night special bearing in mind they’ve ditched so much of that loss-leading national event stuff
fair play
What Hywel said. Obama took our campaigning style and added huge piles of money and the internet as an organising force.
He won because they knocked on more doors and rang more people. Because they got more volunteers.
He fought the whole of the US as if it were a by-election
(Hywel, caveat being that those only contacted by one campaign were possibly more likely to be in safer areas for that campaign, even if they were in swing states overall? I know when we knock up we only spend time on known supporters for example)
Link for the above
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=USP00p2
My favourite bit
Approx 2% of people thought Obama was too Conservative and voted for McCain.
Link to those exit polls
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=USP00p2
I found a combination of Radio 4 and the CNN website worked quite well.
BBC was appalling – the format really didn’t work, far too much ill-informed analysis and not enough news. ITV’s format was better but you could tell the whole thing was done on a budget. No-one approached CNN for balance of news/analysis, clear visuals and good guests. They were cautious about calling things, but after the last two presidential election nights, I think that’s to be welcomed!
I strangely found the best coverage to be Sky news (although this is mostly due to my freeview deciding it didnt want itv to work) The BBC was a shambles and Jeremy Vine was absolute S**T. He should stop trying to be Peter Snow, and just tell us whats going on without all the dodgy gimmicks.
The BBC coverage was exactly what I expected, so I largely stayed away. CNN, MSNBC and Fox all did a markedly better job. The BBC just have the wrong model of what content people are looking for in a results night programme. I would rather have the bloke on CNN drilling down into the precinct results as they come in than listen to some randomers in Virginia say not very much, or some bloggers say not very much.
For most of the time I watched, Sky got the results quicker than the BBC.
I’m with you and lots of others, it seems. The BBC coverage was desperately poor. Dimbleby, Vine and a whole host of celebrities all dropping in their 2p but adding not one iota of real analysis made the night a real chore.
So I mostly stuck with ITV and was pleasantly surprised at the coverage they provided. Yes, it had the look and feel of budget TV, but compared to what the BBC were serving up it was a triumph. It had a degree of honesty, and they kept the vox pops to a minimum.
On the more general point, BBC election coverage is getting worse and worse… except for one blip: the Glasgow East by-election. I think they recognised there that the only people watching would be politicos, and Jon Sopel served up a great feast of analysis and punditry. I hope they do it again tonight, but it does go to show that they can do it if they try. Only us nerds watch election coverage anyway.