Tuesday 4 November 2008

Expat Election Junkie III

6.13pm: The BBC America coverage began at 6, with David Dimbleby in the chair; hearing his voice makes the night feel like election night; he has been at the helm of election coverage for as long as I can remember. I will probably switch around a bit tonight to CNN and MSNBC too, but the BBC coverage, which is currently also on BBC1 in the UK, will be the main channel for us, not least because it gives a nice link with home. Oh, and because Jeremy Vine's graphics look like they are going to be about ten times better than the CNN equivalents, which are distinctly lacklustre.

All day, the BBC News website has been running a live text update service, which has been fun. And over at The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman's Campaign Diary is going to be live blogging. That will certainly be worth watching.

At the moment, the main news revolves around the enormous queues (in America called "lines") at the polling stations. This seems quite remarkable to me, never having had to queue to vote in my life. Why don't they plan ahead and organize things a bit better and open some more polling stations?

6.20pm: Dimbers is getting excited on BBC1; interesting to hear him say "black" lots of times. I have got used to hearing the American media always using the term "African American". But I have to head out for a bit now. Back for the serious action later.

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