The main lines of British political culture over the next four and a half years were constituted by the election of 12 December, and especially by how the broadcasters, especially the BBC, represented the results overnight. …
The centrepiece of election night programming across all broadcast channels was the single Exit Poll, conducted in 144 polling stations, with voters recasting their ballots anonymously for Ipsos MORI. From the change in votes since last time (at the self-same sites) an army of skilled analysts then dissects the new results to predict the overall seat outcomes for the BBC, ITV, and Sky. …
For the BBC especially, the 2019 election night was a gross failure of the Reithian mission to educate and inform citizens at a critical juncture in political life in an open and multi-variant way. It ‘help[ed] viewers and listeners to navigate the initial hours of election night’ only in a one-sided, “only power matters” kind of way. Ironically, this was a complete denial of the BBC’s valuable Election Night heritage – for in the old days of David Butler and Robert McKenzie’s ‘swingometer’, changes in the national share of the votes provided a key focus of discussion and debate across the first hours of every election night. CONT.
Pippa Norris (Harvard) & Patrick Dunleavy (LSE & Canberra), LSE BPP