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For the record – Tim Russert is still essentially using a whiteboard – or an electronic version that can be projected on to a larger screen.

New tech, old-school info delivery.

Don’t forget this excellent and informative graphic from The Onion.

Don’t know the white board. The white board is legend. No one can dis the white board.

White board zen.

Very nice comparison of how different news sites handled the election returns.

I went around to most of these sites, and even more, but couldn’t find one I was particularly satisfied with (and was also updated when new information came in).

The Washington Post was clearly the best of the night.

However, for simplicity’s sake, you just cannot beat a dude with a marker board. Maybe CNN .com should just do a live feed of something like this.

I really liked the Post and the The Times’ coverage graphics. And as long as we’re checking out Election graphics, I have to say that I think ours at the Journal-World, designed by Nathan Borror, was as good as any of the big boys (albeit focusing on the hyper-local level, rather than the national picture). For example: http://www2.ljworld.com/elections/2006/nov/07/races/state_treasurer/

I left MSNBC .com’s Democracy Dashboard popup open all night. While it didn’t seem to refresh itself consistently, live data for each state’s key races was up-to-date, and it used auto-style guages to illustrate the House and Senate shifts, which were also stated as +/- values for each party.

Speaking of Canada, here’s how the CBC interpreted it graphically:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/us-politics/us-midterms-gfx.html

Note that CNN has an row for independents, but decided not to use it for the two Senate independents.

I really liked the way the Star Tribune of Minneapolis handled the election results. It was one of the first pages I checked and once I got there I didn’t need to go anywhere else. The election information was right at the top and in the middle of the page (it has since moved down a little) with all the major election results. Their myVote system also was really easy to use and find poll results with. Three simple steps to determine your district and it pulled up a page with the results of everything on the ballot in that district, updated as results came in.

I was very impressed with the way the Star Trib covered the elections especially with the fact that they didn’t make me try to decode the results myself, they presented them in a very easy to understand format.

MSNBC had a nice Democracy Dashboard. Click Live Results on the following link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/

Tim Russert was definitely using a white board last night.

That USA Today graphic is horrible.

I’m a little biased (from Philly after all) but I think the Philadelphia Inquirer did a terrific job with their Election night graphic:

http://inquirer.philly.com/graphics/election_2006/

The right mix of local and national information.

It took me some time to understand that the white space in the Washington Post graphic are the seats where the results are not in yet.

Maybe this is obvious for US folks, it was not for me (we use a different voting system).

Cool, I did the same last night, camparing and contrasting. For my money Drudge had the best graphic, cutting the heart of what the race was really about on the national level.

Georgia was trending Repub so I didn’t care to much about local races :).

That USA Today graphic is horrible.

Oops, make that /USA Today/NY Times/.

“Give you the big amount gold for free!The activity starts now!Experience it

together now!” cwow

Take a look at how the BBC news website handled the Bristish general election 2005. Of all the UK coverage of this battle for the House of Commons, this website was probably the best designed.

The Beeb did a pretty sterling job of the US Midterms as well.

Tim Russert dragged out the ol’ white board on Tuesday night. Maybe it was a good luck charm for the Dems. Good ol’ T.R. ... he once got very drunk in D.C. with a friend of mine.

Regarding this comment about our coverage at NYTimes.com:

To my knowledge, we didn’t receive a single complaint from a real user that the white areas caused confusion, whether along the lines of tectonic shifts nor Canadian annexation. :-)