I’m disappointed, but not surprised. The polls were indicating that this would be the result for quite some time now.

From the Guardian

7.40pm: It’s official. The no camp have won.

I’m not at the count, so I don’t know whether the anti-AV campaigners threw their hands in the air and shouted: “Yes.” I’d love to think they did.

• The no camp have now officially won the AV referendum campaign. They have passed the 50% threshold. They’ve now got more than 9.8m votes.

7.33pm: According to the BBC, the no camp need to get more than 9.8m votes to clinch victory. They’re almost there. Here are the latest figures, with results in from 342 out of the 440 areas.

Yes: 4,216,527 – 31.7%

No: 9,098,846 – 68.3%

I’m not quite sure where we go from here, if we can’t persuade the electorate to back what was a small first step on the way to electoral reform, I’m don’t know how we convince them to back proportional representation. Not that we are likely to get the opportunity for quite a while.

It also means that the original raison d’être for this blog has gone, although that would have been the case even if we had won. I am going to keep the blog going though, essentially because I enjoy writing it. Anyway the Giro d’Italia starts tomorrow, I’m still riding my bike, painting, cooking and eating, so there is plenty to blog about, and there will always be  other political subjects to get hot under the collar about.