Dr Patrick English is the Director of Political Analytics at YouGov.
YouGov’s new AI topic tracker, launched yesterday, shows that the public are indeed paying attention to the stories which grip us politicos, but that stories are not quite moving through the public conscious at quite the same pace as they may be ours.
The brand-new AI model has been built to help us measure and monitor what stories from the general election campaign, and beyond, are registering at the forefront of people’s minds. YouGov are asking this question regularly on its polls during the campaign.
One of the most fascinating insights from the launch was the speed at which the story surrounding Rishi Sunak leaving the D-Day commemorations in France last Thursday early actually cut through to the electorate.
Rather than an immediate impact, the analysis showed that the public slowly became more familiar with the story over the following five days. The graph below showed the percentage of people who told YouGov that Sunak leaving the D-Day commemorations early was the news story they had ‘most noticed’ on Friday, Saturday, and Monday.
On Friday 7, only one per cent of Brits had heard about the story. This had risen to 26 per cent in the poll which closed fieldwork and was published on Tuesday 11. The graph below visualises the growth in the Sunak/D-Day story over the weekend and into this week. Note that the dates refer to the final data collection time (each poll runs for about 24 hours, overnight).
While it was not until Monday/Tuesday that the story had really lodged itself in the minds of Brits, it had already come to dominate discussion among commentators and keen political observers well before this, with bulletins leading on the controversy as early as Friday evening itself.
No doubt the weekend-long discussion of the story contributed to its slow dissemination into wider public minds, but the fact that it did not register all that remarkably even overnight between Friday and Saturday is very interesting.
What does this tell us about cut-through, and what does or does (or might or might not) matter for the election campaign?
Well, for one thing, it suggests that cut through of major stories or events may take some time to actually register. While keen observers of the election campaign were already talking non-stop about the prime minister’s decision to leave France early all weekend, this simply was not the case for the majority of Brits.
In fact, it has taken until almost a week after the moment itself to properly seep through into the public conscious.
Thinking ahead to the future, the evidence suggests that the election campaign will disseminate and move through the public – and public opinion – at a much slower pace than we may expect. Rather than instantly dropping through, it may be the case that major stories take some time to lodge themselves properly in voters’ minds.
As such, it may be wise to reserve our judgement regarding whether or not an individual story or event will shift the polls until a good few days’ worth of data has come in.
We may only now, for instance, in YouGov’s latest vote intention polling published yesterday, be seeing the full effects of the D-Day gaff; Reform UK are only one point behind the Conservatives, with the two parties on 17 per cent and 18 per cent of the vote respectively.
Generally speaking, however, it does confirm that the things we think will likely matter are in fact mattering. For many, the Sunak’s D-Day faux pas was one of the defining moments of the campaign so far, and one which was expected to be noticed and to go down badly with the public. The evidence here, albeit coming later than expected, would seem to back that up.
Shifting focus a little, how does the Sunak D-Day story compare to other campaign events in terms of level of cut-through?
Well, it handily beats each of the top percentage of people who most noticed the Sunak/Starmer TV debate (12 per cent, on 6 June), the Conservative charge that Labour will put taxes up by £2000 per household (8 per cent, on 7 June), and Nigel Farage’s announcement that he will be standing for and leading Reform UK (12 per cent, 7 June).
The fact that this campaign gaff was cited as the most noticed news story of the last week for triple the number of Brits who cited the main Conservative attack line against Labour will be disheartening for the Tory campaign.
It also serves as a reminder to us that campaigns really matter most (if at all) in British general elections is they are going badly. We only need to think back to 2017 and the ‘Dementia Tax’ to be reminded of this fact.
Finally, in a gentle reminder of how much politics plays a part in the day-to-day thoughts of voters – even at this most crucial and pressing of times – the number one story noticed most by British adults this week? The disappearance and death of Michael Mosley.
The post Patrick English: Bubble-based observers may under-estimate the slow cut-through even of big stories appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Dr Patrick English
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