Wrexham’s General Election – Media Roundup

Reporters from the BBC, NWN’s Leader, Trinity Mirror’s Daily Post and others were at the General Election count in Wrexham, we take a look at the coverage.

The Leader splashed in Wrexham with the Labour hold, with the bizarre or perhaps sarcastic description of the 50% drop in majority for Mr Lucas as ‘slightly reduced’.

Internally there was a special supplement, with the usual results and quotes from candidates. A few pieces adding colour to the occasion had been inserted, a tricky one to complete due to the restricted access to counters or staff due to legal reasons.

Both the Daily Post and The Leader ran social media updates and live blogs, with no public stats aside from what is viewable on twitter and similar. The online coverage was across several counts, covering a multitude of candidates whereas we had the luxuary of focusing on Wrexham and Clwyd South. The BBC were also reporting live from the count, with ITV also publishing updates. Reports were being filmed and phoned through live to various newsdesks.

The move to digital was perhaps best illustrated by today’s Daily Post that told people to look online rather than rushing to get a full print report out – which we assume will be in the Saturday edition.

With Wales Online / Daily Post cheerleading the new dot wales (.wales) domain extension there was a punt on on the website address branding recognition, not only going with the dailypost.wales address but separating it to a new line. Such domain issues were also evident in the byline address, where .co.uk.co.uk was used in an email address.

Despite NWN pushing the boat out in terms of delayed printing and distribution the Chester result escaped their efforts meaning that for the true picture for some areas of interest was online and on TV only.

Deeside.com was at the Alyn and Deeside Count, providing live updates and breaking the result via twitter:

So Labour HOLD Alyn & Deeside…. Lab 16540 Con 13197 Ukip 7260 pic.twitter.com/KdSarL6aBP

— Deeside.com (@DeesideDotCom) May 8, 2015

Cestrian enigma @shitchester attended the Chester count, along with a candidate rather than as media, and gave a blow by blow account of the nine hour slog breaking the news just after 7am – a slight delay against the predicted 2:30am! ‘He’ was straight at it during Friday covering the local council counts as well showing some real dedication.

Congratulations @ChrisM4Chester who is the new MP for the city

— ShitChester (@ShitChester) May 8, 2015

Of course Wrexham.com had the live video stream from the count with various interviews, but the stream was under a question mark until the last twenty four hours after a special request to the Returning Officer had to be placed. Wrexham.com would like to thank the Electoral Commission for their prompt and useful help, and likewise Wrexham Council for facilitating the formal request, and the progressive decision to allow the first ever live feed from a Wrexham or Clwyd South count!

The live page itself was loaded over 20,000 times with 77,000 page views of the live updates. The live video stream had 2459 playbacks with 120 concurrent people alone hitting ‘play’ around the Wrexham declaration – with an ongoing rise in new viewers through the evening. After the result, people naturally switched off…!

Over the count period our tweets had 149,000 impressions with the impressive staying power of Wrexhamites shown by a dull tweet at 3:30am still having nearly 3,500 impressions. 16% of the 4000 impressions of the tweet with a picture of our food from La Baguette click to get a better look at what kept us going!

Food is here! Lots of delicious goodies to Help us get through the night, courtesy of @labaguettewxm :) pic.twitter.com/7bAXBoVzmB

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) May 7, 2015

Wrexham Council were also using social media to provide information to the people of Wrexham:

The verification of votes for the @wrexham Parliamentary seat is now complete with turnout at 64.3% announced. Further details to follow.

— Wrexham Council (@wrexhamcbc) May 7, 2015

The final result was also shared by the Council:

Ian Lucas is duly re-elected as Welsh Labour MP for the Wrexham Parliamentary constituency. pic.twitter.com/gy8kZ7fv7y

— Wrexham Council (@wrexhamcbc) May 8, 2015

The range and availability of information from the counts in the area was great to see, and hopefully will continue to improve for forthcoming elections!

(If you are aware of any other hyperlocal sites or accounts starting up or running in North Wales or the surrounding area please pop us an email!)

UPDATE SATURDAY: In the interests of completeness we have spent a £1 and bought todays Daily Post, which as predicted above, did have the full results and coverage. The Wrexham report does note that Mr Lucas declined to speak to the press following the result.