With only a few hours to go before the UK general election polls open, the level of interest and media exposure is reaching fever pitch. It is quite simply the closest, most interesting and important election many of us have ever been experienced.
As I have posted throughout the campaigning period, the news and media sites are hysterically competing for the most innovative and insightful visualisation device. These are being deployed with the intention of helping users and viewers understand in greater clarity the policy choices being presented to them and also to forecast the outcome of the election based on up-to-the-minute polling data. Here are a few final snippets for you that I’ve come across:
The Independent
Apart from economy, change, bigot, nick and yesterday I met a man/woman in [insert location], the most popular phrase during this campaign has been that of ‘hung parliament’. This is the state of government when no single party has enough MPs (326) to be able to win parliamentary votes without the support of members of other parties. Along with the Daily Mirror, the Independent newspaper has produced a guide which helps voters understand the possible tactics at play should they wish to prefer to pursue a hung parliament over a Conservative party majority.
The Guardian
Observers have commented on the failure of the TV debates, in particular, to encourage the leaders and their parties to clearly and thoroughly articulate their policy proposals to the public. In response, several sites have tried to do this for them, presenting the choices in much clearer and comparable formats. The Guardian has gone a step further with this tongue-in-check digest of the basic options we face based on our fundamental attitudes.
Channel 4
Tomorrow will be a mad day with inescapable, but compelling wall-to-wall coverage of the election. The broadcaster Channel 4 will be presenting alternative coverage of tomorrow’s election to the main news stations, with comedian’s and journalist/social commentators providing a somewhat different punditry profile. On one hand this is quite an appealing prospect to help lighten up the long evening and night ahead but, if these graphics from their election site are anything to go by, it may prove to be a fairly painful visual experience.
Surely the worst graph to have emerged from the election coverage, have you ever seen such a shocker!