Voting places close at 7pm on election day and counting begins immediately. Results appear on screens through the evening, growing from a trickle to most of the vote by late night. Party leaders usually speak once the picture is clear. Everything announced that night is preliminary, and seat numbers can still change.
Voting places close at 7pm on election day and counting begins immediately. Results appear on screens through the evening, growing from a trickle to most of the vote by late night. Party leaders usually speak once the picture is clear. Everything announced that night is preliminary, and seat numbers can still change.
7pm: voting closes, counting starts.
Evening: results build up electorate by electorate.
Late night: leaders make speeches.
Nothing is official until special votes are counted.
Small rural electorates finish counting early, so the first numbers can look unrepresentative. Big city electorates take longer. By late evening the picture usually settles.
Networks use the votes already counted plus patterns from past elections to project the likely final shape. It is an estimate, not a result, and good broadcasters say so on screen.
Hundreds of thousands of special votes are not in the election-night total. In a close election, waiting is the accurate thing to do rather than the boring thing to do.
Do we know the government that night?
Often not. Under MMP the parties may need weeks to agree.
Why do leaders give speeches before it is final?
Because the broad picture is usually clear, even though the detail is not.