The dust has settled from election night(s), the result of which as been a major leap for Tory hopes for the next General Election. But the local and mayoral elections have been something of a dress rehearsal for the next General Election, expected in 2010. Gordon Brown wasn’t ready to risk his reputation in October last year, the Tories were nowhere near ready to mount a serious challenge, and the media was nowhere near prepared for modern election broadcasting. Thursday’s coverage proved that.

Last year’s local election coverage was fairly poor. As has been noted elsewhere, the BBC excelled themselves with what was once the tame domain of Peter Snow’s Swingometer, now under Jeremy Vine’s control, showing such enlightening animation as the infamous Ming’s Bling charade.  I was watching the live feed from 18 Doughty Street: no animation, but a bit of banter.  Crucially, 18 Doughty Street was getting results in faster than the BBC.  While they wasted their time with lowest common denominator broadcasting, the bloggers got on with delivering results.  For a political nerd, awake at 2am to hear results they could gather more fully a few hours later, it became clear that the BBC was wasting my time.  You might think they would learn from their mistakes.

They tried.  A trio of bloggers were introduced by Emily Maitlis once and hour or so, along with some informal chat with lurking politicians.  Iain Dale certainly used his presence to good effect, but the BBC failed to use him.  He was rapid-firing results onto the web, providing a far more useful tool than the BBC’s graphics, which flashed for a few seconds after a long delay.  PoliticsHome, too, was delivering solid results very swiftly.

But the two real winners of the evening were ConservativeHome and PoliticalBetting.com.  ConHome, through its network of contacts, was giving accurate results quickly, with a degree of presentability and professionalism missing from other non-mainstream sources.  They had the courage to call a win for Boris Johnson before anyone else had; the Evening Standard only ran a front page story on a special late edition when Tessa Jowell, among others, had made it clear that she thought a Livingstone victory highly unlikely.  ConHome used the Cover It Live software Scribo has tested in the past, providing a community feel to their operations.  This use of liveblogging, aside from a more conventional live results update, was an excellent balance, providing comment and speculation in an informal conversational style, while also keeping the more established rapidly-updating blog for presenting results.  In this, ConHome gave the best balance of results delivery and all-night enjoyment; I gave up with the BBC’s coverage and stuck to the blogs after a while.  ConservativeHome has established itself so well because its editors understand what people want from their website; it continues to grow in the right direction because it perfectly meets the desires of its readership and genuinely responds to them.  It’s close enough to the heartbeat of the Conservative Party to be of use (liveblogging from inside CCHQ, for example), but is divorced enough to ensure it does not become a collective yes-man (calling a Boris Johnson victory 24 hours before CCHQ had hoped).

One cannot forget PoliticalBetting.com, though.  PoliticalBetting stands alone as providing decent analysis of polls without stuffiness.  The huge number of comments under each thread is indicative of this - although I confess to rarely reading them.  PoliticalBetting was worth refreshing as results came in, but I found the longer-term commentary far more interesting.  The MORI/YouGov debate has been fascinating, showing how the unconventional internet polling firm can deliver far more accurate results than standard, established practices.  There is an important train of thought that suggests the Johnson victory would have been less likely had YouGov not provided the Evening Standard with six consecutive polls going in his favour - but the accuracy of YouGov’s final poll proves their sampling techniques.  As the only polling company predicting a Johnson win, one must consider the relative accuracy of national polls - YouGov’s last national survey found Labour 18 points adrift; an errant dodgy poll, or the most accurate one to date?  PoliticalBetting has been a must-read in the run-up to the elections, and will continue to be in the time leading up to the next General Election.  Charting the Labour decline will be a delicate balancing act, but one must trust PoliticalBetting to provide the most pithy and helpful analysis around.

It is a shame that the BBC let themselves down with the increasingly banal election night coverage.  The idea of importing bloggers to the format failed to liven the programme up - which is a particularly poor effort considering the fact that the viewers of 2am are concerned with results, not a quick chat with Emily Maitlis.  Having heavy-hitters from each party wheeled out to sit in the studio is a tiring gimmick: none of them are going to say anything of any value, simply spinning their stories in valuable time that could be used to give viewers the results they are smoke-screening.  It is a scandal that, especially after the Ming’s Bling disaster, the BBC failed to quality control their hyper-graphics set.  The Wild West theme to Nick Clegg’s graphics was as irrelevant as it was cringeworthy: Jeremy Vine in a cowboy hat firing a pistol at hologram tin cans does not come across as particularly successful.  I have no interest in seeing a presenter dress up stupidly and put on a forced accent to, eventually, tell me nothing new.

The real winner in this election was the New Media.  The blogs get 10/10 for effort, with the odd thing to improve for 2010, when technology and professionalism have progressed a little further.  Maybe LabourHome can get its act together next time, too; it could be an invaluable resource, but is currently a bit of a waste of space on a blogroll.