Report 2 7 November – 20 November 2019

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

Key findings

• The prominence of Brexit has waned in the second week of the formal campaign across TV and press coverage.
• There was a 19 percent reduction in week 2 in the number of TV news items that addressed Brexit
• There was a 9 percent reduction in week 2 in TV items that had Brexit as their main focus.
• There were declines by both measures in press coverage in week 2, but these were not as steep as with TV coverage.

Key findings

• The Prime Minister’s current withdrawal agreement has so far received twice as much coverage as the next most prominent Brexit alternative (remaining in the EU).
• Discussion of ‘No Deal’ and other ‘Hard(er)’ Brexit alternatives received less than a third of the coverage given to the current withdrawal agreement.
• Soft(er) Brexit alternatives (e.g. Norway +, membership of the Customs union, Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement) have received least coverage, even though this is a component of Labour’s Brexit policy.
• The prominence of the Second Referendum alternative reveals that it is this aspect of Labour’s policy that is receiving most media attention.
• The emphasis on Brexit alternatives that are furthest removed from the terms of the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement (i.e. revoking the referendum or revisiting it) suggests a polarisation in the presentation of the policy alternatives.

Key findings

• Coverage of the Electoral Process itself was very prominent in the first week of the campaign, reflecting the launch of the campaign, sudden resignations of frontbench politicians, assorted political gaffes, and intrigues as to which parties were going to stand and the seats they were planning to contest. Levels of process coverage have reduced in the second week, as the parties have started to (pre) launch manifestos and mobilise their core campaign messages.
• As noted earlier, Brexit has been by far been the most significant substantive policy issue in news coverage of the opening stages of the campaign, but its prominence has diminished going into the second week.
• Business/ Economy/Trade has marginally increased its significance in week 2 coverage (8.7 percent to 10.4 percent)
• Health and the future of healthcare has become a more marked feature of election coverage almost doubling from the first to the second week (4.4 percent to 8.5 percent).
• Coverage of taxation has more than doubled, rising from 2.7 percent of all issues to 6.9 percent.
• Interest in immigration has increased, also nearly doubling from the first to the second week, but it has not achieved as much prominence as the topics above (2.3 percent to 4.5 percent).
• The Environment has been an issue in part reflecting the high-profile coverage of the difficulties caused by widespread flooding around the country in week 1. The receding of the flood waters has not led to a reduction in environmental related coverage (2.9 percent to 4.5 percent).

Key findings

• There was a marked reduction in the amount of election related coverage across all mainstream media sectors.
• The largest reduction was in the ‘Quality’ press (21 percent less coverage in the newspaper sections sampled in this study), closely followed by the most popular ‘Red top’ newspaper titles (-19 percent).
• The mid-market newspapers saw a 9 percent reduction.
• The smallest reduction was in TV News (down 6 percent).
• These reductions are mainly explained by the displacement effect of other major breaking news stories during the week, in particular, the controversy created by Prince Andrew’s televised interview about his links to the sex offender Jeffery Epstein and significant developments in the US Presidential impeachment hearings, and assorted items related to the beginning of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity series.

Key findings

• This has been a highly presidential week with a marked focus on the two major party leaders.  This reflects the impact of Tuesday’s debate between them (and controversially them alone) on the way the campaign has been covered.
• Jo Swinson’s attempts to reassert the importance of the Liberal Democrats in this, the week of the party’s manifesto launch, is reflected in her being the third most prominent campaigner.  Her ranking has, however, been achieved with less than a quarter of the coverage afforded Jeremy Corbyn in second place.  More broadly this outcome adds to the further marginalisation of women we noted during the opening part of the campaign.
• John McDonnell remains a high-profile campaigner, reflecting the interest in Labour’s economic programme.  By comparison his rival Sajid Javid has been far less newsworthy this week. 
• Nigel Farage and Nicola Sturgeon remain in the Top 10 reflecting, respectively, their determination to stop and enable a further referendum on EU membership as well as the SNP leader’s desire for another vote on Scottish Independence.
• The prominence of the relevant spokespeople (Jon Ashworth, Luciana Berger and Matt Hancock) reflects the increased coverage of health.
• Priti Patel and her colleague Robert Buckland both make the Top 10 reflecting the coverage devoted to the Conservatives’ plans for immigration and the life sentencing of child killers.
• Almost all of the rebels, retirees and ‘off-messengers’ that featured last week have fallen out of the top 20 (e.g. Jacob Rees-Mogg [Cons], John Woodcock [ex-Labour], Ian Austin [ex-Labour], Tom Watson [Lab]).

Key Findings

• More than one in 2 of all election news reports made some reference to the ITV leadership debate in the 30 hours after the event. In contrast, Jo Swinson’s one-to-one interview broadcast later at 10pm was referred to in in 13 percent of coverage (NB Swinson’s interview gained marginally more coverage than the accompanying interviews with Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon and Sian Berry).
• Positive media evaluations of Johnson’s performance were almost double the negative evaluations whilst negative evaluations of Corbyn were almost quadruple the positive evaluations. As a whole media evaluations were more negative to Corbyn than the public’s view and more positive to Johnson.
• These evaluative differences were almost entirely due to press evaluations. Almost all TV coverage provided mixed or no evaluations.

Key findings

• The two main parties continue to dominate press and TV coverage. In the press, coverage of those representing the two main parties has amounted to 79%. This coverage has been shared almost identically between the two, at 39.7% for the Conservatives and 39.6% for Labour. In TV coverage, their combined presence was 64% - again, this was near-identical, at 31.8% for the Conservatives and 32.1% for Labour.
• Each of the two main parties have received double the prominence that the Lib Dems have received on TV, whose coverage has comprised 16% of all appearances. The Brexit Party and the SNP reached TV coverage of 6% each, while the Green Party’s presence amounted to 4%.
• The Brexit Party has been more prominent so far in the press than the Lib Dems, totaling 7.5% of all appearances compared to the Lib Dems’ 6%.
• Former Labour party politicians (3.1%) have been more prominent than former Conservative party politicians (0.8%) in the press. On TV former Labour politicians have been less prominent than in the press at 1.6%, while former Conservative politicians have been slightly more prominent at 1.3% of all party actor appearances.
• Overall, the presence of these outsiders is receding as the campaign gains momentum.
• Coverage of the Green Party, SNP, Plaid Cymru and DUP amounted to 10% in TV coverage, but only 3% of press coverage.
• There was only one appearance from a DUP politician across all media this week – in TV coverage.

Key findings

• In news presence terms, television coverage of party leaders has placed them on parity with all other politicians combined.
• In the press, however, other politicians are more widely covered. Here, the ratio is closer to 1:2 (leaders:others), rather than the approx. 1:1 ratio of TV.
• While Boris Johnson tends to appear and is quoted more frequently than Jeremy Corbyn on TV and in the press, Labour politicians appear and are quoted more frequently than Conservative politicians on TV and in the press.