Election night result rumours that turned out to be BS

[Deleted]

Didn’t the BBC or someone think the Liberals would gain Gordon?

[pragmaticidealist]

Feb 28, 2018 20:43:27 GMT wjm2000 said:

Feb 28, 2018 20:36:49 GMT beastofbedfordshire said:

I seem to recall that much was made about Hastings & Rye which thankfully (despite the member of parliament) didn't come to fruition.

I remember my heart sinking when Laura Kuenssberg announced that rumour on election night.

Not exactly a rumour but the BBC's seat by seat predictions based on the 2017 exit poll at the start of the night was very wrong, suggesting we'd gain a fair few seats from Labour in Wales (including Wrexham as I'd been dreaming of).

The early rumours about Hastings and Rye were not exactly clear cut (they were generally something like "it's close, could be a recount etc") but you had Rudd herself being briefly interviewed at the count by a local reporter; she most certainly did not look like someone who was confident of holding her seat. 

[willlucky]

Feb 28, 2018 20:46:45 GMT @davidr said:

Didn’t the BBC or someone think the Liberals would gain Gordon?

Yes, the initial seat projection had Gordon going to the Liberals.

[mondialito]

The BBC declared a Lib Dem Hold in Newton Abbot in 2010 before having to announce a correction.

Bizarrely, they also announced an Independent Gain in Manchester Central that election, which was also corrected.

[spqr]

Feb 28, 2018 20:00:39 GMT pragmaticidealist said:

Feb 28, 2018 19:52:19 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I seem to remember a fair bit of rumour about the Conservatives gaining Dagenham & Rainham last June though don't recall if the BBC ever mentioned it. I remember them once flashing up Lib Dem gain Birkenhead (in 1987 I think?)
I also remember some mention of them having erroneously announced a Liberal gain in Bermondsey in 1979 which would have been remarkably prescient but that may be an old wives tale

Tories gaining Dagenham & Rainham actually flashed up on the Sky News results ticker, and Adam Boulton verbally acknowledged it (saying something like "That's Jon Cruddas defeated"). 

Such was the longevity of the rumour that people were still sending their commiserations to Cruddas on Twitter long after the result was declared.

[swanarcadian]

IIRC Perth and East Perthshire in Oct 74 was such a surprise result that they changed their minds and said Ian MacArthur had held onto it, when in fact they were right in the first place that he'd narrowly lost, despite having won by nearly 9,000 just eight months earlier. Alastair Burnett described it as a gremlin.

[pragmaticidealist]

Feb 28, 2018 20:53:21 GMT spqr said:

Feb 28, 2018 20:00:39 GMT pragmaticidealist said:

Tories gaining Dagenham & Rainham actually flashed up on the Sky News results ticker, and Adam Boulton verbally acknowledged it (saying something like "That's Jon Cruddas defeated"). 

Such was the longevity of the rumour that people were still sending their commiserations to Cruddas on Twitter long after the result was declared.

Similarly, one of the Question Time panelists on the edition broadcast on the evening after the election mentioned that Soubry had lost her seat. 

[swanarcadian]

On the other side of the coin, there are occasionally results that genuinely look like errors before they turn out to be true.  When I clicked onto Ceefax the morning after 2005 and saw Lib Dem gain Solihull I automatically thought that couldn't have been right.  When I clicked to see the full result I froze with bemusement for a few seconds.

[pragmaticidealist]

Surprisingly, it took a long time for rumours about Michael Portillo's fate in 1997 to come through. In an interview with Andrew Neil some years after the fact, Portillo said that he was surprised that Jeremy Paxman failed to press him about his chances in Enfield Southgate when he was interviewed by him towards the beginning of the night. He felt pretty sure on the basis of the exit polls that he was in big trouble. 

[Andrew_S]

There's usually a lot of nonsense about turnout on election night. I remember that we were told there would be a big turnout in Torbay about 3 elections in a row between I think 2001 and 2010 and each time the turnout was actually rather disappointing.

[Deleted]

As well as Gordon I think the BBC also projected Ross, Skye and Lochaber as a Lib Dem gain IIRC.

[pragmaticidealist]

Feb 28, 2018 21:27:01 GMT Andrew_S said:

There's usually a lot of nonsense about turnout on election night. I remember that we were told there would be a big turnout in Torbay about 3 elections in a row between I think 2001 and 2010 and each time the turnout was actually rather disappointing.

Another one that stands out is John Simpson's report of a possible 82% turnout in Sedgefield in 1997. 

[No Offence Alan]

I remember "gremlins" initially giving states to Ross Perot in 1992, on the Beeb I think.

[iain]

Feb 28, 2018 19:52:19 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I seem to remember a fair bit of rumour about the Conservatives gaining Dagenham & Rainham last June though don't recall if the BBC ever mentioned it. I remember them once flashing up Lib Dem gain Birkenhead (in 1987 I think?)
I also remember some mention of them having erroneously announced a Liberal gain in Bermondsey in 1979 which would have been remarkably prescient but that may be an old wives tale

Liberal gain Bermondsey flashed up in the GLC election in 1981 - coverage is (or at least was) available online.

[Deleted]

IIRC the BBC had Alyn & Deeside and Delyn down as Tory gains.

The best part of the night was hearing “recount in Westmorland”!

[johnloony]

Feb 28, 2018 20:36:00 GMT swanarcadian said:

Other memorable errors from the BBC 1987 show (besides the exit poll) were the Liberals gaining Cheltenham at the same time Charles Irving was looking in a very jubilant mood, and Dimbleby getting very excited about the Tories being reduced to only 1,000 votes or so in Sunderland South - as though we were going to be annihilated in the industrial North. 
It is by and large, however, a thoroughly enjoyable election night to relive, of course.

The problem with Cheltenham in 1987 was that the Conservative figure of 31,--- sounded as if it was 21,--- and therefore less than the Liberal's 26,---. I remember hearing the figure as 21 not 31, and the "Lib gain" thingy appeared on the screen at the same moment. Then, a few seconds later, I was confused because the Conservatives were cheering. IIRC, part of the problem was that the Returning Officer read out the names and numbers very quickly, without allowing any pauses for cheering etc, and without mentioning the names of the parties. That may have drowned out the bit when he said "thirty" and it sounded like "twenty".

[johnloony]

In 1979 the BBC had the result from one of the Scottish constituencies as 15,--- for the SNP and 2,--- for the Conservative. It turned out to be a misprint for 20,---, but it was a few minutes before the studio realised the mistake; they were interpreting it as an indication that the Conservatives were doing less well in Scotland than in England.

In the local elections in Croydon in 1986, there were rumours that the Conservative leader of the council had lost his seat in Purley to the Liberal Party. It was close, but not that close.

One of the most amusing bits of election night coverage ever, was in 1992 when the Scottish BBC presenter was interviewing Malcolm Rifkind about the "bad" results for the Conservative Party in Scotland. He was talking as if the projected/predicted results from the exit poll were a fait-accompli, and he was ignoring the handful of Conservative holds and gains that had already taken place.

[YL]

Feb 28, 2018 23:19:10 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

IIRC the BBC had Alyn & Deeside and Delyn down as Tory gains.

That was the seat by seat predictions from the exit poll (which as mentioned earlier did some odd things in Wales) rather than dodgy rumours from the count like Shipley.

[ColinJ]

In the BBC (possibly only in the London/South-East region) election night programme in 1981, it was reported that the Liberals had gained Bermondsey at the GLC election. The BBC splashed the astonishing news without checking. It was not a rumour but an error (PA?) from the source at the count who left a zero off the end of the Labour candidate's figure. The real result was Lab 12,000, Lib 2,914 (Simon Hughes), Con 2,444, NF 830.

Slightly later events made the mistake surprisingly prescient!

Added in edit:
Sorry, failed to see pages 2 and 3 of this thread and the unfortunate repeat of iain 's post.

[Deleted]

Laura Kuenssberg was reporting several from "sources" last year that turned out not to be true, though they were usually pretty tight in the end eg Northampton North and the Milton Keynes seats.

Of course, if we had progressive booth level reporting like most other civilised countries, we wouldn't need chinese whisper rumours to be filtered through ignorant hacks in the first place, we could just get the data from source and probably be more authoritative on here than they are on the TV news.