Conclave live: Black smoke signals no new pope yet the seven cardinals most discussed last night

Some of the experts and guests we’ve had on Sky News have used the phrase “moving day”.

It touches on the intricate dynamics of the secretive voting process and how it unfolds in real time, with frontrunners rising and falling.

In short, “moving day” refers to how the cardinals’ votes move from one candidate to another as the successive ballots show where support is coalescing and where it is thinner.

Here Sky News commentator Alastair Bruce and Father Stephen Wang, rector of the Venerable English College in Rome, explain this key part of the voting process.

Momentum reaching critical mass?

Bruce says: “There are people who are heavily promoted at the beginning and do well, and yet they don’t quite have the impetus to get to the top.

“What can happen is a lesser-known name can do increasingly well and votes spill off the ones who were doing well at the beginning and suddenly the lesser-known cardinal gets momentum.

“What tends to happen is about now we tend to see who is getting momentum.

“This afternoon should solve that. The momentum may reach a result, it may not.

“If it doesn’t by tonight, I expect by tomorrow morning… after a good breakfast, we might see a result.”

‘Very important shifts behind the scenes’

Father Wang adds to this, saying: “It’s a very interesting time in the process for the cardinals, after the third ballot.

“Let’s just say, for example, I had someone I was convinced of, and I may have voted for him three times now, and I’m seeing he’s getting four or five votes, but it’s not going up.

“It’s not realistic he’s going to have enough consensus around him from other cardinals, this is just the moment I might be thinking I need to let go of my first choice and look at the others who have a bit more momentum and support them.

“There will be some very important shifts going on behind the scenes now.”