It felt as if the world was coming to a standstill. Time was slowing down the closer we got to 10pm. The waiting became almost unbearable. In the ITV studios, presenters, pundits and reporters nervously rehearsed their lines. Filling in time before the moment when the polling stations closed and the exit poll was announced. Democracy can be surprisingly tense. That one point in the cycle when the power resides with the people, not the politicians.
The exit poll is rarely wrong. It’s never yet failed to predict the largest party. Only in 2015 was there a small glitch when it failed to predict a Tory overall majority. These days it is treated with the reverence of a holy relic. It shapes the narrative of the whole night. The defining verdict on the accuracy of all the other polls conducted over the previous weeks and months. The last word on the ambitions of the party leaders. From zero to hero. And vice versa.
