The Only (Other) Poll That Matters? Exit Polls and Election Night Forecasts in BBC General Election Results Broadcasts, 1955–2017
| Author | Stuart Wilks-Heeg,Peter Andersen |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720906324 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720906324
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(2) 434 –454
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720906324
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The Only (Other) Poll That
Matters? Exit Polls and Election
Night Forecasts in BBC General
Election Results Broadcasts,
1955–2017
Stuart Wilks-Heeg and Peter Andersen
Abstract
This article examines the role of results forecasts and exit polls in BBC general election night
broadcasts from 1955 to 2017. Despite the substantial role played by academics in results
programmes, in devising forecasts and analysing results as they emerge, academic literature on
election night broadcasts is scant. This article charts the development of election night forecasting
over time and its implications for the structure and content of election night broadcasts. It draws
on a unique new data set of verbatim transcripts of the first hour of every BBC election night
broadcast from 1955–2017 to quantify the attention paid to forecasts and exit polls and assess
how they frame discussion of the likely outcome and its potential political consequences. The
article concludes that the function of election night broadcasts as ‘the first draft of psephology’
merits closer attention for both the political narratives and the academic research agendas they
generate.
Keywords
election nights, exit polls, election forecasting, BBC, Payne’s law
Accepted: 19 January 2020
Introduction
Within the extensive international literature on elections, considerable attention has been
paid to the role and influence of television coverage (Ansolabehere et al., 1993; Banducci
and Karp, 2003; Nimmo, 1970; Semetko, 1996), including the significance of specific
televised campaign events, such as leaders’ debates (Blais and Perrella, 2008; Coleman,
2000; Drake and Higgins, 2012; Pattie and Johnston, 2011). Understandably, the primary
Department of Politics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Corresponding author:
Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Department of Politics, University of Liverpool, 8-14 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69
7WZ, UK.
Email: swilks@liverpool.ac.uk
906324PSX0010.1177/0032321720906324Political StudiesWilks-Heeg and Andersen
research-article2020
Article
Wilks-Heeg and Andersen 435
focus of such research has been on television content during campaigns, how it is con-
sumed and employed by voters, and whether it shapes political opinions and, therefore,
ultimately influences vote choice (Ansolabehere et al., 2011; Beckett, 2016; DellaVigna
and Kaplan, 2007; Wring et al., 2017). In contrast, literature focussed on the final broad-
cast event of any election, the results programme itself, is far more limited. A small body
of work on exit polling, which has become a core feature of election night broadcasts
since the 1970s, provides a partial exception (e.g. Bishop and Fisher, 1995; Brown and
Payne, 1975, 1984; Curtice et al., 2011; Curtice and Firth, 2008; Levy, 1983; Traugott and
Price, 1992). However, these accounts overwhelmingly focus on the technical issues
associated with the design of exit polls and their accuracy, rather than on the part they
play in relation to broadcasting coverage. The significance of election night broadcasts as
events in themselves has received scant attention.
On one level, election result programmes are designed with the simple purpose of
conveying and explaining the results to the electors (Lauerbach, 2013; Orr, 2015; Ross
and Joslyn, 1988). Yet, for those engaged in them, such broadcasts constitute a unique and
complex broadcasting context, creating opportunities and risks that go beyond simple
reporting of establishing which party proves victorious and why. On election night, politi-
cal actors react to individual constituency results and to the emerging evidence of the
overall performance of their own, and rival, parties. The narratives which emerge on elec-
tion night can frame the legacy of an incumbent or outgoing government and provide, or
diminish, political capital for parties and leaders immediately after the election (Cathcart,
1997; Hale, 1993; Mendelsohn, 1998). In addition to politicians, election night broadcasts
typically involve journalists, academics and other commentators in a process of framing,
shaping, contesting and reinforcing these narratives. Importantly, this process takes place
in ‘real time’, in response to rolling information about outcomes in individual constituen-
cies, before any detailed analysis of the final national results or of post-election survey
data is possible. Just as journalists provide ‘the first draft of history’, election night broad-
casts can be seen to offer ‘the first draft of psephology’.
This instant, televised analysis is likely to carry significant weight in how election
outcomes are interpreted, particularly in the short term. Explanations that emerge from
election night broadcasts can become important points of departure for scholarship in the
weeks and months that follow, sometimes becoming a focus of academic controversy. An
example from the 2017 UK General Election provides a useful illustration. Early in the
BBC election night broadcast, with just two constituency results declared, the BBC’s
Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, told lead presenter, David Dimbleby, that a view was
emerging that higher turnout among younger voters was a key factor in Labour’s unex-
pectedly good performance. References to the role of younger, youth or student voters
were repeated at regular intervals in the hours that followed, helping shape a view that a
‘Youthquake’ had taken place and was central to understanding the election outcome. Yet,
this claim has subsequently become the source of significant academic controversy.
Prosser et al. (2018) drew on British Election Study data to describe the youthquake as a
myth, while others responded to reassert the case that turnout among younger voters had
increased (Sturgis and Jennings, 2019) and that the youth vote had made a significant and
discernible difference (Sloam and Henn, 2019; Stewart et al., 2018).
In this article, we explore how the production of on-the-night results forecasts, a long-
standing focus of academic engagement in election nights, shapes the structure and con-
tent of television broadcasts. The first part of the article summarises the limited available
literature on election night broadcasts and charts how election night forecasting methods
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