Report 5 7 November – 11 December 2019

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

• Coverage of the electoral process itself was most prominent. This is a recurrent and predictable feature of UK election reporting. Levels of process coverage in 2019 broadly matched those observed by the CRCC in the 2017 General Election.
• As was widely anticipated, Brexit was the most prominent substantive policy issue. In 2019 Brexit gained more prominence than it did in 2017, but not by as much as one might have anticipated (13 percent compared to 11 percent). TV news gave greatest emphasis to this policy issue.
• Aside from Brexit, the clearest difference between news sectors was in coverage of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’s future role in the United Kingdom. This received some prominence in TV news coverage but barely registered in press terms.
• Elsewhere, there was striking consistency between the two news sectors as to the other main issues.
• The economy, the health service and taxation commanded high levels of coverage.
• One major reason for the relatively high rankings for ‘Standards/ scandals’ and ‘Minorities/ religion’ was the allegations made against the Labour party and its supposed failure to deal with anti-Semitism in its ranks. 
• The environment received more coverage than it did in 2017, but only just (up to 3 percent from 1 percent in 2017). Coverage of the environment may be increasing, but it has yet to be emphasised in party political terms in election coverage.
• Despite Boris Johnson’s controversial comments in the last week about EU migrants who ‘treat the UK as if it’s part of their own country’, coverage of ‘Immigration/ border controls’ was 2 percent down from levels observed in the 2017 General Election.

Figure 1: Top issues by week (all media)

• Brexit was by far the most dominant issue at critical points of the campaign – its start and end –but in the intervening periods its prominence lessened, to the point in week 4 that it fell behind all other three major policy themes.
• Research has shown that many voters only start paying attention in the last days of an election, so the final rush of Brexit coverage could have been consequential.
• The previous decline of Brexit shows how it became an implicit rather than explicit aspect of coverage. Brexit was still there, but as our analysis shows it had become increasingly part of the background context of the campaign rather than its focal point.
• Health and health care coverage gained its greatest prominence in week 4, receiving slightly lower prominence in week 5.
• The growing and sustained significance of ‘standards/ scandals’ from week 3 onwards was driven initially by anti-Semitic accusations against Labour and then controversy about the Prime Minister’s allegedly uncaring response to a picture of a young child denied an emergency ward bed.
• Even when Brexit was reported, there was a lack of policy focused analysis as to what implementation might mean. This stood in contrast to the detailed appraisals often applied to other manifesto commitments. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies gained considerable campaign coverage through their analysis of parties’ spending pledges and projections. Fifty three percent of their appearances were linked to taxation related coverage and 46 percent to business and economy coverage. Only 8 percent were connected to Brexit.

• Both measures show Labour have accumulated very high levels of negative press coverage for every week of the campaign.
• The unweighted data shows these amounts have increased weekly and peaked in the final week of the campaign.
• The Conservative party halved its level of negative unweighted coverage in the final week.
• Increased levels of positivity towards the Conservatives in the highest circulation titles in the last week pushed the party’s weighted total above the line.
• All other opposition parties saw increased levels of negative coverage in the final week.

• Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were the dominant figures in an election that was highly personalised around them and their competing political visions. 
• Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was a clear third in the Top Twenty and was also over twice as prominent as the current postholder Sajid Javid. This reflected the promotion and scrutiny of Labour’s ambitious infrastructure plans.
• Only five women made the Top Twenty and of these the highest placed Jo Swinson was a distant fourth behind her Conservative and Labour counterparts, and less prominent than the Shadow Chancellor. The Liberal Democrat leader was only slightly ahead of the Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage who, despite having no representation in the previous parliament, was afforded more attention than SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon.
• The prominence in the Top Ten of both Jonathan Ashworth and Matt Hancock reflects the significant debate over the future of the NHS during the campaign.  Ashworth’s sixth place in this list was also due to his embarrassment following the publication of comments he had made in a private phone conversation. 
• Another notable feature of the Top Twenty were the relatively prominent appearances made by campaigners formerly associated with Labour (ex-ministers and MPs Ian Austin and John Woodcock) and UKIP (Arron Banks) who had switched their support to the Conservatives.  The list also featured two other unelected figures, Len McCluskey and Dominic Cummings, who were influential advisors to the Conservative and Labour leaders respectively. The list also featured two other unelected figures, Len McCluskey and Dominic Cummings, who were influential advisors to the Conservative and Labour leaders respectively.

• The party leaders dominated TV coverage in the last week of the campaign. Boris Johnson accounted for 68 percent of all Conservative appearances and Jeremy Corbyn, 56 percent of Labour appearances.
• Boris Johnson also dominated press coverage, accounting for 57 percent of Conservative appearances. In contrast, Jeremy Corbyn’s press profile only amounted to 28 percent of all Labour appearances.

• Television was more diverse that the press in terms of the range of political parties covered. For the press, the 2019 General Election was a two-horse race and other parties struggled to gain much coverage.
• That said, television news was more ‘presidentialised’ than the press, with the party leaders commanding a greater proportion of TV coverage relative to their party colleagues.

• By contrast, Labour by and large neglected Brexit, discussing it in less than 5 percent of its tweets. Labour focused predominantly on health (24.1 percent), the environment, and business.
• Besides Brexit, the Conservatives focused quite heavily on taxation (16.2 percent), which was relatively neglected by all the other parties.
• Unsurprisingly, the environment was by far the top issue for the Green Party (45.9 percent), and devolution was the key focus for the Scottish National Party (29.8 percent) and Plaid Cymru (21.4 percent).
• The Brexit Party was unique in its focus on defence and terrorism (14 percent), particularly in response to the attacks in London.
• Overall the results suggest that the main parties and their leaders fought remarkably different campaigns: the Conservatives, the LibDems, and the Brexit Party waged an all-out Brexit-centred campaign, while the other parties tried to shift the focus on the issues that they felt strongest on (the NHS for Labour, the environment for the Greens, and devolution for the SNP and Plaid).

• While the campaign has arguably been characterized by high levels of negativity, overall the tone of the parties’ tweets has been substantially more positive than negative.
• All parties were positive in their tweets at least half the time, with the Conservatives posting 75 percent positive tweets and the Brexit Party, Greens, and Plaid Cymru all posting 60 percent or more positive tweets.
• While Labour, the SNP and the LibDems also posted more positive than negative tweets, they were more likely than the other parties to attack their opponents.
• Nearly half (44.5 percent) of the tweets posted by the Lib-Dems were negative, compared to 39.4 percent for the SNP and 30.1 percent for Labour.
• By contrast, only 22.4 percent of the Conservatives’ tweets were negative, the smallest percentage among all the parties apart from the Greens (11.6 percent).
• The data show a clear difference between the campaigning style of the incumbent party, overwhelmingly focused on marshalling support for the Government and its Brexit deal, and the main challengers, who spent much more time and efforts attacking the Conservatives.