Polls have closed in 161 elections. How many stories will there be?
I’m reporting from our Vancouver newsroom tonight. Polls have officially closed provincewide.
I’ll be delivering results on our live broadcast and contributing some thoughts here from time to time.
Local election nights are fun things to cover, but they’re also very tricky — everyone cares about what’s happening in their own municipality, but with the exception of Vancouver and sometimes one or two other cities, very few people care about results anywhere else.
I’ll try and look at trends happening across the province, and see if there’s a couple of broader stories worth mentioning. Will voters prefer candidates who focus on crime and safety issues? Promote an aggressive stance on development? Will incumbents perform better than usual, or will it be a night of sweeping change?
Or, maybe it’ll be 161 different results in 161 different municipalities, with no overarching story that we can tell.
One thing is for sure: I’ll be pressing the refresh button on election pages constantly, in anticipation.