General election leads to "unprecedented" traffic for BBC website

After one of the most closely-run election races in recent history, it looks like the UK is headed for a hung parliament. With a massive turnout, voters have turned in their droves to the BBC website, who are reporting incredibly high traffic following their election coverage.

The BBC’s Steve Herrmann wrote on The Editors blog, “As the story of the election continues to unfold, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of traffic to the BBC News website – it’s looking like more than five million users since midnight according to the data we have so far, and thousands of searches every minute on our constituency result pages.

“For such high usage, it’s all been working pretty smoothly on the technical front, and we’re working hard to make sure it stays that way. If the site is a bit slower for you at any time today, that’s why.”

Good coverage by the BBC all round this year. May I especially tip my hat to David Dimbleby, who, at the time of writing, is STILL heading up the election coverage on BBC One, with the veteran broadcaster having been presenting the show right through the night.

I also wouldn’t mind having a play about with the giant iPad thing Emily Maitlis has been using all night either!