Election 2015: Who won the social election?
As a country awaits the verdict of a new order, social seems to have already elected its winner, according to Harris Interactive's Lee Langford.
Britain’s political parties have taken the battle to social in a push to woo undecided voters, as millions head to their local polling stations, social seems to have already elected its winner, according to Harris Interactive’s Lee Langford.
In an attempt to canvass social media’s opinion, Langford, Research Director at Harris Interactive decided to use SocialLife, its social media tracker, to investigate the big picture and understand just how successful parties and politicians have been.
Polling 2,931 GB adults aged 18+, a number of interesting insights emerged:
Social media sites used in last 30 days
| Labour | Green Party | Conservative | Lib Dem | Ukip | |
| 83% | 80% | 80% | 85% | 82% | |
| 41% | 39% | 34% | 30% | 28% | |
| 16% | 20% | 17% | 9% | 13% | |
| Snapchat | 11% | 15% | 12% | 9% | 7% |
The majority of voters – young and old – use Facebook nowadays so this platform does not offer any differentiation. However Labour and Green Party supporters are more active than their Tory, Lib Dem and Ukip counterparts on lesser-used sites like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. This finding aligns with the younger average age profile of Green Party and Labour supporters (36 and 40 years respectively) compared with Ukip (45) and Conservative (44) supporters in particular.
Frequency of checking social media status
| Labour | Green Party | Conservative | Lib Dem | Ukip | |
| Constantly | 23% | 14% | 17% | 10% | 15% |
| About 10 times a day | 8% | 11% | 7% | 10% | 7% |
| Less often | 69% | 75% | 76% | 80% | 78% |
Labour supporters are also most active on social media generally with almost a quarter (23%) checking their social media status constantly throughout the day compared with just one in ten Lib Dem voters.
Political parties followed on social media
| Labour | Green Party | Conservative | Lib Dem | Ukip | |
| Labour | 26% | 6% | 6% | 5% | 3% |
| Green Party | 3% | 23% | 2% | 4% | 2% |
| Conservative | 3% | 5% | 19% | 2% | 5% |
| Lib Dem | 3% | 5% | 4% | 13% | 3% |
| Ukip | 1% | 2% | 2% | 0% | 24% |
Those intending to vote Labour are twice as likely to follow the party on social media (26%) as Lib Dem supporters are to follow their choice of election party (13%). In fact, Lib Dem supporters rank lowest on this measure by a clear margin with almost a quarter of Ukip and Green Party supporters following their political party of choice.
Followed on social media
| Labour | Green Party | Conservative | Lib Dem | Ukip | |
| Any political party | 27% | 30% | 21% | 17% | 26% |
| Any sports teams | 58% | 44% | 50% | 55% | 44% |
| Any politician | 14% | 16% | 14% | 10% | 11% |
| Any celebrity | 59% | 53% | 50% | 56% | 45% |
Without any context, these ‘follow’ figures for political parties might indicate a high level of engagement with the political process. But some simple benchmarking gives the lie to this and in fact the social media using public are much more likely to follow sports teams than political parties and celebrities than politicians – as highlighted very clearly in the table above.
Politicians followed on social media
| Labour | Green Party | Conservative | Lib Dem | Ukip | |
| Ed Miliband | 34% | 1% | 7% | 0% | 6% |
| Natalie Bennet | 1% | 9% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Caroline Lucas | 1% | 15% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| David Cameron | 13% | 1% | 49% | 29% | 20% |
| Boris Johnson | 3% | 13% | 10% | 10% | 7% |
| Nick Clegg | 1% | 1% | 3% | 5% | 5% |
| Nigel Farage | 0% | 0% | 3% | 0% | 73% |
The Nigel Farage effect is very apparent in this final table which looks at which individual politicians are followed by party supporters (who follow any politicians). Farage (73%) is comfortably ahead of David Cameron (49%) with a further significant gap to Ed Miliband (39%). Nick Clegg (5%) is the least popular party leader when it comes to social media followers and former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas is slightly more popular among Green supporters than her replacement Natalie Bennet.
Clearly the SNP won the social election? I’m surprised they don’t even feature in this study.
You’ll find that the Nigel Farage effect is just due to people taking the mic out of him – twitter was litered yesterday with Farage and UKIP #WhyImVotingUKIP posts – they were halarious but in no way in support of those nutters.