President Obama: The Inauguration

This was not the star-spangled clamour it ought to have been.

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US Election Night

“It belongs to you,” proclaimed President-Elect Obama, live in Chicago.
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Voting early

Relive the days of those Newsround Extra election specials! Read more

Election 2007

There is bad weather in the Western Isles. On Newsnight, “Radio 2′s Jeremy Vine” (in the words of Jeremy Paxman) has just exhibited a blurred map of Britain flecked with indistinct multi-coloured blotches. Read more

Election ’92

Fame may deal an inconsistently fleeting hand to practitioners of TV and politics, but when both worlds collide you see stardom at its most ephemeral. Read more

Election ’83

At least they got the exit poll right. At the start of the coverage, David Dimbleby announced that the Conservatives were going to win the General Election with a majority of 146. At the end of the coverage, David Dimbleby announced that the Conservatives had won the General Election with a majority of 144. Read more

Election ’87

The BBC’s exit poll from the 1992 General Election always gets slammed as the most inaccurate political prediction TV has ever made. Read more

US Election 2004

Befitting an occasion that somehow felt far more exciting than any recent polls this side of the Atlantic, the BBC unfurled its coverage of the American Presidential election results with the kind of swaggering, bombastic signature tune that’s been sorely absent from homegrown hustings for far too long. Read more

Election ’74

More repeats on digital TV, then. But BBC Parliament’s real-time replays of General Election results coverage have been absolutely inspired programming. Read more

Election ’70

One of the absolute TV highlights of last year was BBC Parliament’s screening of the BBC 1979 General Election results coverage. With the minimum of publicity and in a resolutely low-key fashion, the entire service was repeated minute by minute in real time. Read more

Vote 2003

Rarely had David Dimbleby been faced by so much commotion during the first 15 minutes of a local election results programme. Seconds before coming on air, the out-of-the-hat resignation of Tory Trade Spokesman Crispin Blunt had handed him his very own breaking story. Read more

Vote 2002

David Dimbleby was forlorn. “I always pronounce it wrongly but I try my best,” he spluttered sheepishly. His stumbling over the correct way to pronounce the borough of “Adur” could, however, be forgiven. Read more

It’ll Be Alright on Election Night

It used to be that when the voting closed on election night, not only would you get exit polls and swingometers into action, but also satirists coming on screen to glory in the freedom that no government for a night brings. Indeed, in 1997, BBC2 devoted almost four hours to comedy-related programming, including the mammoth Election Night Armistice offering instant piss-taking on the night’s events. Read more

Election coverage – week three

Ratings continue to tumble. Viewers are switching off their sets in protest at relentless footage of vain, bickering groups of people struggling to survive in increasingly hostile, desperate circumstances. Read more

Election coverage – week two

When Baldrick stood for election in the constituency of Dunny-on-the-Wold, his campaign manager Edmund Blackadder proposed a strategy to win that focused wholly on “issues, rather than personalities”. It helped that the entire population of this rotten borough were three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named Colin and a small hen in its late 40s, but as Blackadder and a bewigged 18th century Vincent Hanna discovered, the strategy paid off. Read more

Election coverage – week one

It’s the end of the first full week of the TV election campaign. Read more

Vote 2000

There is almost something addictive about waiting for the result of an election on BBC television; a sort of nervous excitement that accompanies staying up late into the night to watch, hoping to find yourself witness to some of the most dramatic and memorable moments of television history. Read more