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.