Report 1 7 November – 13 November 2019

David Deacon, Jackie Goode, David Smith, Dominic Wring, John Downey, Cristian Vaccari

Key findings

• TV coverage of the Conservative party and Labour was close to parity (33 percent versus 32 percent). The Liberal Democrats were a prominent third presence, accounting for 13 percent of all appearances. The Brexit party and SNP also established footholds (7 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Ex-Labour and ex-Conservative MPs also featured at the margins (3 percent of cases each).
• The two main parties dominated newspaper coverage, with Labour accounting for 40 percent of appearances and the Conservatives 35 percent. As later findings show, the greater prominence of Labour sources cannot be construed as a positive advantage for the party (see Figure 5.1).
• The Brexit party was the third most prominently featured party in the press (8 percent of all appearances). Nigel Farage accounted for most of these appearances.
• The Liberal Democrats accounted for 5 percent of all appearances, with Jo Swinson barely registering in the press (see also Table 2.2).
• Ex-Labour politicians received more press coverage than ex-Conservative politicians (5 percent to 1 percent).
• Other national and minor parties gained negligible press coverage in the first week of the campaign.
• Conservative party sources gained greatest prominence in TV and press coverage in terms of the frequency of their appearances.
• The two main political parties dominated press coverage to a greater extent than in TV news. In the press, Conservative and Labour sources accounted for 84 percent of all politicians reported. On TV news they accounted for 67 percent of all political appearances.
• No representatives from the Democratic Union Party gained sufficient prominence in coverage to be included in this account.

Key findings

• Labour received more direct access in TV news than the Conservatives but both parties were nearly equivalent in direct press quotation.
• The two main parties accounted for 60 percent of all direct quotation in TV news and 75 percent of all quotation in newspaper coverage.
• Smaller parties received little direct quotation in newspaper coverage. Of these, Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party received most direct quotation in the press (1629 words), but ex-Labour MPs nearly matched this figure (1469 words).
• Ex-Conservative MPs received slightly more quotation time in TV news than Ex-Labour MPs (413 seconds compared to 236 seconds).
• Nicola Sturgeon accounted for 98 percent of all SNP direct quotation in TV news.

Key findings

• Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were the most prominent politicians during the opening stage of the campaign.
• Coverage of John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor exceeded that of Sajid Javid, the incumbent Chancellor, in both TV and newspaper coverage. The presence of both in the Top 5 reflected the significance of the economic debate in the first week of the formal campaign.
• Nigel Farage received notable coverage due to the speculation over whether and where he and his Brexit Party colleagues would stand in the election.  The nature of his subsequent ‘pact’ with Boris Johnson generated further publicity, notably in a Tory press that echoed further calls by Mr Farage’s pro-Leave ally Aaron Banks (another Top 10 figure) for him not to contest key marginal seats that the Conservatives might win.
• Former Labour minister and MP Ian Austin was the 6th most prominent campaigner following his criticism of Jeremy Corbyn over his leadership and antisemitism.  Supporting Mr Austin’s comments, his close ally John Woodcock made the Top 20.
• Although leaders such as Nicola Sturgeon and Jo Swinson are in 7^th and 8^th place respectively there were only 5 female campaigners in the Top 20 most prominent figures. Nicola Sturgeon and Jo Swinson were conspicuously marginalised in newspaper coverage.
• The sudden resignations of Tom Watson and Alun Cairns from the Shadow Cabinet and Cabinet respectively afforded them places in the Top 20
• Several campaigners appeared in the Top 20 because of the controversy that followed widely publicised comments.  A notable example of this was the coverage devoted to Jacob Rees-Mogg over his comments about the Grenfell disaster.

Key findings

• The data show that female actors are marginalised in cumulative terms in comparison with their male counterparts during the election campaign so far.
• This gender imbalance is evident in both news presence and news access.
• Men spoke three times as much as women in TV news and 5 times as much in newspaper coverage.

Key findings

• Discussion of the drama, rituals and uncertainties of the election itself dominated the campaign in the first week, particularly in the press (see ‘Electoral process’). This is consistent with patterns found in previous UK election coverage and is commensurate with overall figures of 38.1 percent and 40.6 percent of process coverage at this point of the 2017 and 2015 campaigns respectively.
• Brexit was the most prominent policy-oriented issue of the campaign during the first week. We disaggregate this category in the discussion below.
• News concerning the Economy, Business and Trade was the second most prominent substantive issue category. The other major issue of the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, Immigration, was less prominent in these early stages.
• Coverage focusing on the Environment was far more prominent in TV news than press coverage. This has been largely driven by serious incidences of flooding across the country, which stimulated wider discussion of the adequacy of politicians’ responses to the crisis.
• Devolution was relatively prominent in TV coverage, almost matching Economy/Business/Trade and Environment, but was largely neglected in the press.

Key findings

• The largest single category of electoral process sub-themes is ‘tactical voting/party pacts’, which reflects the announcement of various alliances between political parties during the week and speculation about the potential tactical behaviour of voters.
• Intra-party divisions are also relatively prominent, particularly in the press.
• Discussion about ‘manipulation, disinformation, and other threats to electoral integrity’ received some prominence in press and TV coverage, stimulated in the main by the decision to delay publication of the report by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee on Russian activity in UK democracy until after the election. 

Key findings

• By far the biggest Brexit sub-issue relates to ‘party strategies and alternatives’ related to Brexit, at well over half in TV news and almost three-quarters of Brexit coverage in the press.
• In contrast, discussion of public opinion concerning Brexit has been relatively low.
• The potential impact of Brexit has received more prominent discuss in TV news than in the press.

Key findings

• The unweighted results show that only the Conservative party received more positive than negative coverage across all newspapers.
• The increase in positive Conservative evaluation in the weighted data (Figure 5.2) reflects the strong editorial support provided by the newspapers with the largest circulation (the Daily Mail and the Sun).
• In contrast, Labour had a substantial deficit of positive to negative news reports in the first formal week of the campaign. This offers important context to the findings presented in Figure 1.2. Labour politicians may have had more coverage in the national press than the Conservatives, but a large proportion of this was negative.
• The minimal deficits for the Liberal Democrats and SNP largely reflected their marginality in newspaper coverage (see Figure 1.2).
• The increased deficit in negative coverage of the Brexit party in the weighted data reflects the impact of negative coverage in the Daily Mail and The Sun.