Swingometer

A mainstay of BBC election night coverage, the swingometer was designed to explain the unfolding results in visual terms. It has kept pace with evolving broadcast technology and developed from a simple hand-made prop into the latest in computer wizardry.

In this collection, we examine the evolution of this political pendulum and meet some of the presenters who made the device their own. Extracts from election nights over the decades remind us of dramatic victories and losses and demonstrate some of the stresses of a live television broadcast.