Election Analysis
We have never known such electoral uncertainty.
There are a plethora of pollsters, data handers and political commentators but sometimes you need enthusiastic and objective qualitative analysis.
With 20 years of media and broadcast experience, van der Knight can explain elections clearly and without patronising the audience.
Gareth Knight’s approach to election analysis is always to let enthusiasm for elections and democracy come across in a way that is informative to those with little knowledge without being patronising to those who already know more and, on election night, to actually reporting and analysing results.
Behind the scenes preparing for an election night is 80% of work and research that never gets broadcast – notes on individual key seats ready to deploy just in case something comes up that we don’t expect. There are always hours of “filler time” on election night and you can never fully predict where the conversation will take you.
Preparation is key
Knowledge and experience are always crucial. Broadcasters are not short of “talking heads” who give opinion but around elections listeners expect more than just opinion, for example, one of the most common series of questions on election night is how the process actually works, made even more complex by the myriad of different voting systems now in use.
Knowledge and experience
To ensure the best possible listening experience the various guests and analysts have to work together to get their message across – disagreeing when necessary but always with clearly defined roles to carry out. If the elections analyst is leading the conversation on the results then the polling expert leads the conversation on explaining why these results happen and the politicians on how they want listeners to interpret the results. Building a good rapport with the rest of the team is an essential part of ensuring the listener enjoys the show.
Working as a team
Using knowledge and as much data as we can obtain to make a reasonable decision, combined with a tight team of producers, presenters and analysts, LBC’s election night shows have frequently made big calls long before other broadcasters. If we can see it, we know other broadcasters can see it, so the listener is surely interested in knowing what we can see?
In 2015 we made the call that Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls may lose his seat around 9 hours before anyone else and in 2016 we predicted that Donald Trump would likely win the US Presidency 3-4 hours before other broadcasters. This wasn’t based on guesswork, it was based on the data we could see in front of us and made for a more exciting show for listeners as partisan commentators argued against what we could see right in front of our eyes.