Elections 2019

Euronews is going all in with their first election programme which starts at 5pm UK Time on Sunday.

RTÉ's full coverage of Elections 2019 will begin at 11am tomorrow on RTÉ One & RTÉ News Now. They will analyse all of the results for the local elections, European Elections, Divorce Referendum & plebicites for directly elected mayors in Cork, Waterford & Limerick.

It is planned that ballot papers for the Divorce Referendum & local elections will be counted first from tomorrow. The European Election papers will be counted up after that on Sunday & the plebicite papers will be counted after that possibly on Sunday night into Monday.

People voting in the Ireland South European Constituency also have the longest ballot paper in this election at 25 inches; which equates to 2 feet long in length. Paschal Sheehy tried to put up a blank example of a ballot paper up on camera when doing a live OB from Cork this evening while being interviewed by Keelin Shanley in studio. There was also some delays from people getting ballot papers put into ballot boxes at polling stations in the West of Ireland today. Pat McGrath, RTÉ's Western Correspondent, said that polling station workers had to get rulers from classrooms for members of the public to the straighten up the ballot papers to put them into the boxes.

I think Studio 3 will be the main studio for the election coverage this year. This will be the first time that this studio will be used since it had it's new curved video wall installed in January this year. The graphics and presentations look to be the same as RTÉ coverage of Election 2016 which was used for the general election in Dáil Eíreann.

Here is the example of the RTÉ Elections 2019 logo. There are small changes applied to the fonts but it still remains as good as ever.



The Late Late Show is also providing live coverage of the RTÉ Exit poll results from Studio 4 at 10pm tonight.

So I expect more presentation graphics to come up here tonight.

The RTÉ set looks really well in election mode - shows the potential of the set up - I think maybe they could have been a little more ambitious with the news rebrand than simply “do the same thing again with updated technology”.

I should mention though, they do have an absolutely ginormous Elections 2019 DOG.

It's not only EU Elections Results tomorrow, its the Belgian Parliamentary elections & a number of local elections across Europe

Here is an example of a graphic from the RTÉ/TG4 Exit Poll for Ireland South Euro Constituency. Not much change in the presentation.

This is the area where the couch has disappeared in RTÉ Studio 3.

I thought exit polls couldn't be published until after all European polls closed. That's what the BBC have stated is the case here, so I'd have assumed it was the same across Europe.

I believe that only UK-based media outlets wait for everybody before publishing exit polls -- at least I remember that being the case last time around. When it comes to following EU guidelines, I suppose that sometimes the UK is more Catholic than the Pope.

Here's a post from five years ago:

It is a UK-specific thing, exit polls have been published in some other European countries as well (e.g. the Netherlands).

I would even be wary about the above posts, as under UK law it is a criminal offence to publish any exit polls from anywhere in the EU while polls are open.

I trust that UK authorities exercise common sense when applying such laws.

Authorities in the UK would almost certainly not enforce any action on UK citizens or media organisations simply reporting exit polls elsewhere. It’s all a bit of a strange anomaly. A little like UK viewers being banned from text voting in Eurovision! My guess is that the election watchdog felt it made sense to play it safe and apply the same rule to all elections here in the UK. There is - to some extent - an argument for applying the rule across the EU. A number of exit polls are suggesting a green wave and a rise in pro EU votes, which could motivate similarly minded voters in countries yet to vote to get out and follow the trend.