CNN cleans up while Fox plays to empty room

On CNN's extended election pundit special The Situation Room, all the usual suspects were present: Former Clinton advisor David Gergen, Texan political strategist Paul Begala, Republican commentator Alex Castellanos, radio host and prominent Obama cheerleader Roland Martin, and Jimmy 'the ragin Cajun' Carville, a Democrat spindoctor bald as Brando's Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

As if the election itself weren't exciting enough, CNN had created a huge computer generated White House and Senate which would appear now and again in the centre of the studio, and from inside which the faces of prospective congressmen would emerge on giant virtual flying-carpet-cum-playing-cards, sweeping up at intervals to present a peacock's fan of players.

On another screen at the back of the cavernous room, the exit polls were arranged as though in a chest of drawers of the type they use in expensive lingerie shops. Just press the narrow drawer marked WHITE EVANGELICAL MALE and out silkily-slid the statistics: pie charts, previous election results, projected readings, comparative analysis. But all this was nothing in the face of the prize: CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin reporting from Chicago via hologram.

‘Jessica is not actually in New York with us! She is a hologram’

Like Princess Leia, she stood in front of the Situation Room anchorman Wolf Blitzer, flickering, and ever so slightly smaller than she usually is. "I am currently inside a tent with 35 high definition cameras ringing me, shooting my body at different angles," she explained. "My cameras in Chicago are talking to the cameras there and so I am with you in NYC!" Blitzer shook his head in wonder. "Jessica" he breathed, "you make a terrific hologram. Doesn't she make a terrific hologram? People, listen up – Jessica is not actually in New York with us! She is a hologram."

At seven o'clock Kentucky came in for McCain and some counties of Virginia too, with half a neon green bar running along the bottom of the screen giving the impression that the state was downloading and had got stuck. Painful minutes passed with no change or further information. Blitzer turned to Gergen to find him uncharacteristically ratty. "Why bother with exit polls!" Gergen snapped, his face suddenly slim and young, as though he were actively shedding weight and time with the sheer quantity of feeling pulsing through him. In