Couple create election map covered in red pom poms after tracking results

Charlotte and Ed Peacock stayed up until 4am on Friday morning tracking the General Election results with pom poms (Ed Peacock/PA)

A couple stayed up on the night of the General Election night tracking the results by sticking coloured pom poms to a map of the United Kingdom.

Charlotte Peacock, 42, and her husband Ed, 39, had plenty of red pom poms ready for Labour’s landslide victory and are putting the finishing touches to their map after underestimating the number of Liberal Democrat MPs that would need their orange pom poms.

The couple, from Cardiff, have made a tradition of staying up to watch the results while filling out a pom pom map, as they did the same for the 2019 and 2017 elections.

An election map covered in pom poms — The couple’s election map is covered in red pom poms after Labour’s success (Ed Peacock/PA)

Ms Peacock told the PA news agency that the night went “really well” and they were “pretty relieved”.

“This is our third time doing it and we’re actually a bit more organised. We had the right shape pom poms, the right shape ties and it all went really well and it looks really good.

“We definitely had enough red because people were very keen on making those.

“I know in previous years, people were a bit more resistant, like they didn’t really want to be making the blue ones for us and Ed’s mum ended up making a lot of those in previous years and took one for the team, so she’s an expert now.”

The night was “a bit more dramatic than we thought,” she said.

Charlotte Peacock with election map with first pom pom on — Charlotte Peacock stayed up until 4am with her husband to cover the map (Ed Peacock/PA)

“I’ve had to make some more orange pom poms because I think opinion polls that they had out before, they’re not always accurate.

“We’ve had to do some emergency pom pom making to finish it off.”

Mr Peacock previously told PA he would have “exactly three beers on the night” and his wife said he kept his word, adding: “I definitely had more and then at one point cracked open the wine.”

The couple stayed up until around 4am before going to bed.

“The results were coming in quite fast and our brains just weren’t working, so we got most of them done and now we’re finishing it off,” Ms Peacock said.

An election map covered in pom poms next to a TV — The couple have created pom pom maps in previous elections (Ed Peacock/PA)

She added: “It’s a really interesting way to keep up with the results as they come in.”

Looking ahead, Ms Peacock said: “Now we’re trying to think about the American election, because obviously, it’s slightly different.

“I teach people how to make things, so we’ve basically been going through all the crafts that I do and teach, and we’re trying to work out which one will be most suitable for the American election results.

“Pom poms is one of the ideas but we could do a crochet version or a quilted version, but I think we’re going to have to have three more beers to come up with that idea, that seems to be when (Ed) has all his good ideas.”