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Voting influences
Posted Colin Byrne on November 24th, 2009 | Filed under Current Affairs, Politics, The Media, Weber Shandwick
As the general election looms ever larger you can’t move without tripping over someone who claims to be a key insider from President Obama’s digital and social media campaign. Digital campaigning and social media is a growing battleground area for the main parties, with the Conservatives still clearly in the lead, helped by celebrity blogger outriders Mssrs Dale and Fawkes.
However a recent “INLINE” (quite simply, where online meets offline in integrated communications campaigns) survey of eligible UK voters by Weber Shandwick suggests that digital won’t have that decisive an impact in the country at the next election, despite the passions and claims and counter-claims it inspires in the Westminster bubble.
Details are below.
When I trailed this research in The Guardian recently, a Lib Dem blogger accused me of doing down political social media campaigns. Far from it. I am proud to have top Labour blogger Luke Akehurst on my team, Jonny Rosemont in my digital squad is a Tory blogger, and we will soon be launching a new Tory blogger onto the scene. I even dabble myself occasionally.
I strongly believe that at grassroots level, digital and social media is already a strong force, even if the attempts by party leaders get mixed reviews. the recent Mumsnet oting by David Cameron shows how effective narrow-casted digital outreach can be.
So I wasn’t knocking it, I was merely reflecting on the first statistically sound and comprehensive poll of its kind, and the comparison to the influence of digital advocacy on consumer purchase decisions – cited as the biggest influence in a parallel “INLINE” poll of UK consumers.
Anyway, here’s the stuff. The longer report on consumer insights can be seen on our website.
BRITISH VOTERS STILL TURN TO TRADITIONAL PRESS AND BROADCASTING WHEN THEY DECIDE HOW TO VOTE
LONDON, UK – Nov, 2009 – Despite the huge impact of digital and social media on Barack Obama’s election campaign, and the strides by UK political parties to emulate that, a new poll shows that blogs, social networking sites and digital campaigning will have little impact on UK voters in the coming general election.
The poll, for leading UK PR Company, Weber Shandwick, by KRC Research, was conducted with over 1,000 potential voters at the time of the recent Party conferences. In parallel to other research conducted amongst UK consumers about what media channels influenced their purchase decisions – which showed digital and social media and online advertising to be the biggest influence on buying decisions – political voters rated political blogs and party campaigns on social networking sites to be the least influential media avenue on voters.
Political adverts scored the same influence rating on voters as brand advertising did with consumers – 10%.
“Traditional media” (national print, brand media, local media and news media websites) were rated as overwhelmingly the most influential on voters – 59% influence rating vs 23% influence rating on consumer purchase decisions.
Despite huge attention given to political blogs and efforts on Facebook and similar social networking sites by UK political leaders, blogs and social networking sites scored only a 5% influence rating on voters, and party websites and political viral advertising only a 7% influence rating.
According to Weber Shandwick’s CEO, (and a former Labour election strategist) Colin Byrne, “Whilst digital and social media is now a huge influence on consumer purchasing despite all the hype about Barack Obama’s election campaign, Gordon Brown on YouTube and David Cameron’s “Webcameron”, British voters are still overwhelmingly influenced by good old press and broadcasting. This will change over successive elections as a new generation of voters come of age, but for now former Cabinet minister Hazel Blears appears to have been right when she said, “YouTube if you want too…….”.
# # #
NOTES TO EDITORS:
• Research conducted amongst a sample of 1,017, aged 18+ in the UK in the weeks leading up to this year’s Party Conference season by KRC Research.
• Sample was representative of gender, age demographic and UK regions.
• 72% of sample said they were certain or likely to vote in the next general election.
• 16% of respondents indicated that they still had to make up their mind on which way to vote.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
When it comes to the UK election and social media we are in for a reality check. Barack Obama surfed a wave of enthusiasm online among young switched-on web-users. There’s no such wave for any of the major parties in the UK to surf (hence the BNP is the major web-force, sort of). But Obama’s web presence was top down me-to-you and has evaporated since he won power – so mainstream media rules in the US, too. But, still, social media cannot be ignored and sometimes it is the real thing. Conflicted? You bet!
November 25th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
[...] Politics , elections Leave a Comment Tags: blogging, elections, Politics A big hat tip to Colin Byrne’s blog for drawing this one to my attention. First the disclaimer, clearly online and social media are [...]