How to Live Blog Elections: A New Coverage Benchmark

“Live blogs aren’t just fast — they’re habit-forming.” — Peter Marsh, Editorial Lead at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The New Pulse of Election Night

In the era of 24/7 digital news, static articles and scheduled bulletins simply can’t keep up with the speed and complexity of political events. Whether it’s a breaking poll, a leadership debate, or real-time vote counting, readers expect immediate updates and interactive storytelling.

In May 2025, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) set a new benchmark for digital election coverage. With 4.2 million views, 5.7 million digital users, and record-breaking app usage, ABC demonstrated how a well-executed live format can drive reach, engagement, and loyalty all at once.

Another standout success in 2024 came from the Minnesota Star Tribune, which used Live Center to transform its U.S. presidential election coverage into a dynamic, real-time experience that felt fully native to its platform. By integrating seamlessly with Arc XP and Pugpig, the Tribune delivered live election results directly into its mobile app, achieving a +174% increase in screen views and a +35% surge in app users during election week. Editorial feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and for the first time, mobile users enjoyed an experience that surpassed desktop. With Live Center powering its live blog, the Star Tribune not only modernized its newsroom workflows but also significantly boosted audience engagement—proving that strategic investments in real-time storytelling can lead to measurable, high-impact results.

This post breaks down what made ABC’s approach so effective, and offers a practical blueprint for how your newsroom can replicate that success using Live Center:

• A look inside ABC’s 2025 election coverage strategy
• A step-by-step guide to launching your own high-impact, habit-forming live election blog

Inside ABC’s Election Night Success

ABC’s 2025 federal election coverage exemplified how real-time news can generate national impact. Through a smart use of platforms, visual storytelling, and direct audience interaction, ABC delivered a deeply engaging and accessible experience to millions of Australians.

Here’s how they did it:

1. A Multiplatform Strategy

ABC’s federal election coverage stretched across every platform — from broadcast and web to app, live blog, and social — ensuring Australians could follow the story anytime, anywhere, and in any format.

By the Numbers:

• 4.2M live blog views
• 5.7M digital users
• 862K app users (a new record)
• 1.7M live streams
• 4.1M+ broadcast reach

2. Real-Time Storytelling via Live Blogs

ABC’s federal election live blog represented a key pillar in the election coverage strategy, enabling the editorial team to provide a rich and insightful reading experience to their users.

• Embedded charts and polling data for real-time results
• Pinned key events so latecomers can get up to speed fast
• Reverse-chronological post options for latecomers wanting to read the live coverage from the beginning
• Dynamic visuals to bring context and clarity

3. Enabling Two-Way Audience Engagement

ABC leaned into the informal, dynamic nature of live blogging to build a stronger relationship with readers, fully adapting to its native environment.

Their blog allowed readers to:

• Login or sign up to submit comments or ask questions throughout the coverage
• Lowering the interaction barrier by enabling reactions via their custom emoji-set
• Providing a feeling of being heard and connected — not just informed

 

4. Adopting A Human Tone of Voice

Transparency, responsiveness, and tone of voice form the foundation of ABC’s live-blogging strategy. Reporters are encouraged to let their personalities come through in the coverage, placing individuals — not just information — at the center of the story. Key takeaways are:

• A conversational tone brings warmth and authenticity to fast-paced reporting.
• This personal approach fosters recognition of individual journalists and builds stronger loyalty to both the coverage and the ABC brand.
• Being transparent about what’s confirmed versus what’s still developing enhances credibility and trust in real time.

By humanizing the reporting process, ABC turned its live blog into a trusted companion during a national moment.

5. Seamless UX — Especially on Mobile

Election night is mobile-first. Live blogs are native to this format and render without compromising richness or speed.

• Use collapsible posts for easy scanning
• Keep video and image-heavy posts performant

For the Minnesota Star Tribune, the app-optimized layout that led to a 35% increase in app downloads during election week alone.

By minimizing friction and maximizing clarity, ABC kept readers engaged throughout the election.

Operational Guide: Make Your Election Live Blog A Success

Live blogs stand out by delivering updates in reverse-chronological order, keeping readers instantly informed as events unfold. Their format supports multimedia storytelling—from videos and charts to social embeds—while built-in features like polls, reactions, and Q&As invite readers to engage directly. This combination of real-time delivery, rich context, and active participation turns live blogs into highly interactive, evolving news experiences.

How can newsrooms achieve outstanding results with its election live blog and leverage this format to its full potential? Here’s a checklist to make your live blogging activities a sound success.

1. Before going live: Plan & Prepare

Decide and set-up your editorial workflow well in advance, ensuring your journalistic team has the correct access rights at any given time, across your brand(s).

• Define the purpose of your live blog to match it with your newsroom objectives. Are you aiming at registering new users? Or pushing for more mobile app downloads? Whatever your objective, having a clear vision allows you to shape your live blog in such a manner as to help you fulfil your objectives.
• Identify linking strategy: relevant explainers, internal promotions
• Draft core posts and assets in advance: result templates, candidate bios, rules summaries
• Decide key SEO elements upfront: SEO-friendly title, URL, opening paragraph with keywords, metadata ready
• Use tags for topic clusters (e.g. “Result”, “Debate”, “Breaking”) to improve SEO and user navigation
• Coordinate with data partners or press agencies ahead of time
• Prepare visual assets: header image, charts, alt-text.
• Live Q&A or debates: Host live sessions with political experts as guest speakers and drive reader registrations though question submission and active participation; or live blog about a debate and allow online question submission via your live blog.

“It was gold that the newsroom wasn’t asked to learn a new tool. With Live Center, journalists could start using it immediately” – Aron Pilhofer, Chief Product Officer at The Minnesota Star Tribune

2. During the live coverage: Best practices to turn your live blog into a high-traffic & memorable reading experience

Leverage various live-blogging features to provide more clarity to your live feeds and a better reading experience throughout your live blog coverage. Decide in advance which features you want to leverage and how they should be executed.

• Create a summary of key events in the introduction section, with links to posts that cover major updates so that readers are able to get the full picture at a glance, or jump to moments of interest with your live blog.
• Pin posts: Pin results or key moments at the top or your coverage, and update it regularly
• Use clear timestamps and punchy headlines per update.
• Mix content formats: text, images, embeds, video, UGC.
• Custom icons: upload custom icons ahead of time for parties, candidates, or indicate types of updates
• Breaking News Alerts: Highlight urgent developments and distinguish those from other updates

Lean on Visualizations to Tell the Full Story

• Integrate poll data, election maps and party graphics to support your coverage
• Embed videos, images and social media posts for an immersive feeling

Encourage Real-Time Audience Engagement

• Live polls: Integrate live polls in your coverage to activate audience participation
• Post reactions: Enable low-threshold participation for readers, for example through emoji-reactions to live feeds updates.
• Enable reader comments (and moderate them with ease) – you can post a collection of reader comments in a live feed, showcasing that readers are being heard and their input valued, or enable a commenting section at the bottom, similar to a forum.

In any case, audience engagement represents a key element in audience engagement strategies because it fosters a sense of community, enables direct dialogue, and deepens reader investment in ongoing coverage—especially during major events like elections.

By encouraging audience participation through comments, ABC transforms its live blogs into interactive forums rather than one-way broadcasts, enhancing loyalty and return visits. This approach not only boosts dwell time and repeat traffic, but also gain real-time insight into audience sentiment and questions, which can inform editorial direction and strengthen trust.

3. SEO-specific best practices while live blogging

• Update the metadata as the story evolves, and adjust the url and the title daily if your coverage expands over several days
• Optimize images with filenames and alt-text.
• Implement LiveBlogPosting schema to signal to Google that the page is continuously updated
• Deploy server-side rendering (SSR) , if possible, to ensure crawlability and fast indexing
• Add tags and internal linking into and out of the live blog to maximize  discoverability

“News publishers are in a unique position, as Google wants to crawl newly published articles very quickly, within a few minutes of their publication”. – Barry Adams, SEO expert at Polemic Digital

You can learn more about how to fully SEO-optimize your live blogs and articles to increase visibility and ranking in search engines (or LLMs) – download our expert e-book, co-authored with Barry Adams.

Final Thoughts

Live blogging elections is both an art and a science. Successful newsrooms around the world have experienced first the powerful combination of speed, storytelling, and structure. Live Center is here to support you with best-in-class

Are you ready to take the next step?

Download our e-book on live blogging elections, or explore Live Center for yourself with a free trial.