The Spectator’s Notes | 6 November 2004

‘It’s that Florida 2000 feeling all over again’, said the BBC anchorman at breakfast on Wednesday. It wasn’t. George Bush was well ahead in the popular vote nationally and seemed set to win even without Ohio. The only similarity with Florida 2000 was the Democrats’ (and therefore the television’s) desire to take away the legitimacy of the result. But what is most frustrating about coverage of US elections in Britain — and it is happening more and more with our domestic election coverage — is the paucity of hard information. Elections have results, lots of them, in congressional districts, in Senate races, in states, across the nation. It’s like football or cricket. If you’re interested enough to be watching, you want to know the scores, and what they mean. I watched and listened to the BBC for a couple of hours without ever being given actual figures for all the states that had declared.