Election Night Bingo

Election Night Bingo

These cards were originally created for the UK General Election in July 2024 and have now been customised for the US Presidential Election in November 2024.  You can also edit the items and upload your own background to make the cards suitable for any election, any time, anywhere in the world.

Our election night bingo cards are packed with events that might happen and things you might see or hear in the course of election night TV or radio coverage.  For example, you can mark off January 6th if anyone mentions it, or it appears in a caption or graphic.  And you can mark off MAGA if anyone mentions it or you see anyone on screen wearing a MAGA hat or other merchandise.  Mentions do not have to be by an official presenter or guest, it can be anyone seen on screen or heard!

You can watch a single channel’s coverage all of the way through, or flit between them – just make sure that if you choose to play the bingo cards competitively, you’re all watching the same coverage.

Election Night Coverage Details

Those of us in the UK have three main choices for TV election coverage:

Sky News coverage will be led by Mark Austin and Yalda Hakim, with US correspondent Mark Stone in Sky’s Washington studio and James Matthews and Martha Kelner on the ground in Florida and California.  Exit poll and vote counting results will come courtesy of Sky’s US partner network NBC.

On Channel 4, the coverage will be led by Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy and former BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis just as for the UK General Election.  In partnership with CNN, the programme will feature Jeremy Vine fronting the data and infographics and special guests including Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen and Boris Johnson, so it should certainly be entertaining enough to keep you awake!

BBC coverage will also come from Washington DC, anchored by US chief presenters Caitriona Perry and Sumi Somaskanda.  One very interesting team member is Marianna Spring, the BBC’s Social Media Investigations Correspondent; she’ll be reporting on what’s happening on social media as it unfolds.  BBC US correspondents will be on the ground in seven key battleground states and the BBC Verify US team will be on hand to do continuous fact checking (which is sure to be needed!)

Election Night Timeline

The election night timeline in the US is much more fluid than in the UK and because of the different time zones results for eastern states (especially ones which are not battleground states) are often declared shortly after midnight UK time before the polls in western states have closed (which isn’t until 4am UK time).  In most previous elections the result of the presidential race has been declared on the night, but in 2020 it took 4 days because of all of the postal votes that had to be counted but couldn’t be processed ahead of election day due to state laws.  This time, even more postal voting is expected and if the result in swing states is close it could again take days.

How to use the Bingo Card Generator

You can play for fun with just one card, but if you’d like to generate a set of cards which are all different from each other, here’s how:

• Tap to start
• At this stage you can make any desired tweaks to your cards:
  • We’ve set the grid size to 4×4 giving each player 16 items to look out for, but you can use the dropdown to change it to 3×3 or 5×5 if you’d like
  • We intentionally chose neutral colours for our card design but if you’d like to change it to the colours of your preferred political party, go right ahead
  • You’re bound to have plenty of ideas for things to go on the bingo card that we thought were just too controversial or too sweary.  Now is the time to add them to the list, and you can also remove any items you don’t like; just ensure you keep enough items on the list for everyone to get a different bingo card.
• Press Generate Bingo Cards
• For printed bingo cards, enter the number you want and press Generate Printable Cards.
  • A page or pages of cards will be generated, all different from each other and unique to you.
  • They can be printed from your browser (adjusting the scaling via the printer settings if necessary) or you can copy or bookmark the URL for printing later.
• If you don’t have a printer you can Invite through email.
  • Each person you invite will receive a link to their very own unique bingo card, and you’ll get your own card too. (We don’t keep their email addresses).
  • Play your card on your phone or other device – when you daub an item, it changes colour.

Mark off the items as you spot them. The first to complete a line wins and if you’re not planning to stay up all night you can stop it there, but if you’re pushing through to the bitter end you will probably want to play on to see who completes the most lines or gets full house.