When was the first televised election debate?

TV clashes

The concept of a televised election debate is often believed to have begun with the one held between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon before the 1960 US presidential election – an innovation not repeated until 1976. (The first televised election debate in the UK didn’t take place until the 2010 general election.) Yet its history can really be traced back to 4 November 1956 when, days before Americans were invited to choose between President Eisenhower and Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson II, the CBS News show Face the Nation held a half-hour debate between Eleanor Roosevelt, representing the Democrats, and Margaret Chase Smith, representing the Republicans. Remarkably, it was the first time that the show, which by then had been running for two years, had featured any female interviewees, let alone two. The smiling and behatted Roosevelt dominated the talking over the more subdued Chase Smith, but she did not prevent President Eisenhower winning a second term.

Unsafe seats

An Electoral Calculus poll predicted that the Conservative party could be reduced to just 66 seats in the House of Commons at the next general election. In which elections, post 1945, has the official opposition won the fewest seats?

Conservatives 1997                               165

Conservatives 2001                               166

Conservatives 2005                               198

Labour 2019                                           202

Labour 1983                                           209

Labour 1987                                           229

Labour 2015                                           232

Gender agenda

The 2021 census asked us: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ 118,000, or 0.5% of the population, answered ‘no’, although many non-native English speakers are believed to have misunderstood the question – not least because one of the areas with officially the largest transgender population in Boston, Lincolnshire, home to many Eastern European migrants. Of those who answered ‘no’:

– 48,000 (0.1%) said they were born female but are now male.

– 48,000 (0.1%) said they were born male but are now female.