Social networking maps political landscape in 2010 in UK General Election

London, UK – 14 May 2010 – Alterian (LSE: ALN), a leader in customer engagement technology and solutions, today released further statistics, which showed how the conversations on social media sites reflected the events of the 2010 UK General Election. SM2, Alterian’s social monitoring tool, examined over 500,000 conversations across various social media platforms, providing volume and sentiment analysis of the main political leaders over the course of the election.

For the purposes of measurement, the election campaign was divided into three time periods - the Pre-Debate period, the Debate period and the Election period. From the results of SM2, Alterian has mapped the key highlights and lowlights of the election campaign.

In the 224,139 conversations tracked during the Pre-Debate period (26th February to 14th April), Gordon Brown enjoyed an overwhelming volume percentage of conversations – 70 percent. During this stage, David Cameron only received a volume of 24 percent, with Clegg receiving 6 percent. As the incumbent, it is not surprising that Brown had the largest amount of conversations at this stage before the opposition had started campaigning in earnest.

As well as volume, SM2 also measures sentiment, an important variable that reveals the public appeal of each party leader. During the Pre-Debate period, a large and consistent amount of neutral sentiment was felt for all three party leaders. This can be explained by the fact that prior to the debate (before manifestos were released) there was nothing significantly contentious or controversial to split the public’s emotions. It is reasonable to conclude that each individual held their pre-existing opinions of the party leaders. Having said that, Nick Clegg received a higher percentage of positive mentions than negative during this period. Both Gordon Brown and David Cameron had more negative than positive conversations.  However, only 13 percent of Gordon Brown’s conversations could be classified as negative but David Cameron had the highest percentage of negative conversations, checking in at almost 17 percent of all conversations being classified as negative.  

SM2 also allows users to understand where the conversations are taking place.  During this period, Nick Clegg had more conversations (over 28 percent) taking place on Microblogs such as Twitter. This is not surprising and actually previews his entire social media campaign. Nick Clegg has his own personal Twitter feed with 27,423 followers, which is substantial when compared to the overall number of those following each party’s Twitter handles, with the Lib Dems with 17,670 followers compared to the Conservatives 28,771. Gordon Brown, on the other hand is seeing his conversations occur in more mainstream social media platforms such as blogs, wiki’s and message boards.  
 
190,996 conversations were tracked between 15th April and 5th May, the Debate period. This marked a significant event in UK politics as it involved the first ever televised UK Prime Ministerial debate. As a result, SM2 tracked nearly the double of the daily conversations from the Pre-Debate period.

The most obvious information that can be gleaned from this is the rise of Nick Clegg. Clegg’s volume of mentions increased from 6 percent (in pre-debate period) to over 23 percent of conversations. The percentage of conversations mentioning Cameron increased to 28 percent, whereas Brown shrank considerably to 49 percent. During this period each candidate saw their percentage of positive conversations rise as compared to the Pre-Debate period. The increase in volume for Clegg was also seen in the sentiment analysis. Over 18 percent of Clegg mentions were positive compared to 15 percent negative. This can be explained by the general consensus that Clegg had the best performance during the initial debate. Cameron received virtually the same amount of positive and negative mentions during this period. Brown only received a positive growth of 1 percent but this is expected considering the fallback of the ‘bigotgate’ scandal. 

During the Election period (6th May to 11th May), SM2 tracked over 97,235 conversations. During the election, we see a doubling of the average number of conversations per day to 19,447 compared to 9,550 in the previous period. This emphasises just how popular and interesting this particular election was. After the rise of Clegg during the Debate period we see his mentions remain constant at 23 percent during the Election Period.  However, Cameron’s increases to 29 percent while Gordon Brown still leads with 47 percent of the conversations.

However, this was not reflected in the sentiment analysis during the Election Period. Each party leader after the election has more negative sentiment than positive. Cameron’s negative sentiment increased from 16 percent to 18 percent.  Even Nick Clegg who in both the previous periods had more positive than negative sentiment, during the Election Period has seen his sentiment turn more negative than positive. This could possibly be explained by the fact that we now have a coalition government, a system of governance that is not popular with the electorate. The report also examines key topics discussed in ‘theme clouds’ associated with the party leaders. SM2 found that the term ‘hung’ - referring to hung parliament featured more prominently in negative conversations than in positive.

David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian commented on the analysis, “This year’s election is indisputably one of the most interesting elections that we have ever seen and this has been reflected by the amount of interest garnered both in social and traditional media. There is no doubt that social media played a key part in driving conversations and gathering support. While the candidates predominantly used traditional media to drive their messages, the electorate has shown the importance of social media as a means of engagement.

Alterian SM2 is a social media monitoring and analysis solution designed for PR and Marketing professionals. SM2 helps track conversations, review positive/negative sentiment for brands, clients, competitors and partners across social media channels such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, social networks, video/photo sharing sites and real-time alerts.

For more information on Alterian SM2, please visit http://www.alterian.com/products/social-media-monitoring

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