Report 1: 30 May – 5 June 2024

David Deacon, Jilly Kay, Brendan Lawson, Nathan Ritchie, David Smith, Dominic Wring.

Dr David Smith is Lecturer in Media and Communications, University of Leicester.

Key findings

• The two main parties dominated both press and broadcast coverage, continuing an established trend from previous elections.
• Between the two main parties, Labour is present in a significantly higher portion of TV coverage. The opposition party is present in 46% of broadcasts compared to the Conservatives 30%.
• This trend is also evident in press coverage, although to a lesser extent, with Labour present in 45% of all coverage compared to Conservatives 38%.
• Coverage of the two main parties’ leaders Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer is similar both in the press and broadcast showing some balance in terms of presence of leaders.
• Since data collection began on 30^th May, Labour’s internal party divisions have featured prominently in coverage (see Section 3). This in part explains Labour’s prominence during this initial period.
• The Reform Party was the third most prominently featured party in the press (10%) with returning leader Nigel Farage accounting for most of these appearances: 70% of all coverage of the Reform Party and 7% of coverage overall.
• Nigel Farage was also third most present leader in television coverage behind Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak (see Section 2). He had more TV coverage alone than each of the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru, though not more than their combined presence.
• In contrast, the Liberal Democrats have only been present in 2% of newspaper items. The current leader of Lib Dems, Ed Davey makes up 50% of the parties’ overall newspaper presence.
• The LibDems also received less TV news coverage than the Reform party.
• Other national minor parties have gained negligible press coverage in the first week of the campaign. 

Key findings

• The two major parties received more or less equal quotation time on TV, with Labour slightly edging this due to Keir Starmer’s greater prominence than Rishi Sunak’s.
• In the press, however, Sunak was given over 1.5 times more speaking time than Starmer. Otherwise, their respective wider parties received broadly equal access in quotation terms.
• Broadcasters gave more time to the leaders of smaller parties - most notably Reform UK and the Green Party – than the press, whose coverage of the Lib Dems, the Green Party, and the SNP was virtually non-existent during this sample period.
• The leaders of all the smaller parties dominated their media appearances. Other politicians within these parties had scant opportunity to speak.
• The arrival of Nigel Farage in the campaign as Reform UK leader and parliamentary candidate yielded nearly as much quotation in the press as Keir Starmer received. But as with TV coverage, there was little speaking time given to other members of Reform.

Key findings

• Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak were by far the most prominent politicians, overshadowing the coverage of their respective colleagues and opponents.
• Labour figures dominated the Top 10 foremost campaigners, taking half of the places on the list.
• Reform leader Nigel Farage came third overall in terms of news prominence and, in the process, gained far greater attention than his Liberal Democrat and SNP counterparts combined. Farage’s colleague Richard Tice also managed to attract more coverage than both Ed Davey and John Swinney.
• Women politicians account for only a third of the Top 20. The Greens’ Carla Denyer, the only female party leader (excluding Northern Ireland), does not appear on the list. That said, if the news coverage given to Denyer and her co-leader Adrian Ramsay was combined it would have seen them in the lower part of the Top 20 as a leadership pairing.
• There were reminders of Labour’s current and recent internal divisions in the prominence given over to prospective candidate Diane Abbott, the party’s former Shadow Home Secretary. Deputy leader Angela Rayner’s prominence is in part a reflection of her intervention in support of Ms Abbott. The party’s former leader Jeremy Corbyn was the only independent politician to make the Top 20.
• The appearances in the Top 20 of all the major party spokespeople on the economy, home affairs (notably immigration), health and defence reflects the prominence and variety of issues that have attracted attention during the opening stages of the campaign (see section 3). 

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. We disaggregate this category in the discussion below.
• Taxation was the most prominent policy-oriented issue of the campaign during the first week. The prominence of taxation is linked to the high-profile dispute between the Conservative Party and Labour over Rishi Sunak’s claim that Labour’s spending plans would increase tax by £2,000 per household.
• Immigration and border controls was the second most prominent substantive issue category (ranked third overall). The prominence of this issue was heavily influenced by the surprise announcement that Nigel Farage would stand as an MP for the Reform Party.
• The issue agendas of TV and the press were largely similar, with the exception of coverage of the environment. Whilst the environmental ranked 10^th overall, TV covered this issue more prominently than the press.

Key Findings

• Just over 25% of all electoral process themes focused on internal party divisions. This reflects a week of internal issues within the Labour Party, centring on the selection and deselection of Diane Abbott and Faiza Shaheen.
• Concerns about manipulation, disinformation, and other threats to electoral integrity featured more prominently in TV news coverage for this period.
• Discussion of the role of mainstream media received more attention in the press than TV. 

Key findings

• Conservative and Labour recorded substantial deficits in positive to negative newspaper coverage in this first week of sampling.
• Labour had the highest levels of negative coverage over this period. 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 significant proportion of this was negative.
• The levels of negativity in the reporting of the Conservative party contrasts starkly with levels found for the equivalent stage of the 2019 UK General Election, where the Conservatives recorded marginally positive aggregated ratings.
• Reform UK was the only party to record a positive overall evaluation for this first week of the analysis.
• The minimal deficits for the Liberal Democrats and SNP largely reflected their marginality in newspaper coverage (see Figure 1.2).

Key findings

• The Daily Express recorded the highest levels of positive coverage for the Conservatives, nearly doubling the Daily Mail’s.
• Overall, coverage of the Conservatives in The Daily Telegraph was more negative than positive.
• The Express published the highest levels of negative coverage of Labour, followed by the Telegraph and the Mail.
• Only the Daily Mirror and the Financial Times recorded an aggregate of positive coverage for Labour. The Mirror by a considerable degree, the FT by a far smaller margin.
  
• Several newspapers displayed negative coverage overall for both parties.
• The Guardian, The I and Daily Star were more critical of the Conservatives than Labour.
• The Sun and The Times, two titles owned by Rupert Murdoch, were more critical of Labour but, nevertheless, recorded cumulatively negative treatment of the Conservative party.