Report 5: 30 May – 3 July 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 major party leaders dominated the election. From week-to-week Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak also vied with one another to be the more high-profile campaigner.  More generally leaders were by far the most prominent representatives of their respective parties’ campaigns, taking front and centre stage throughout the election.
• From the moment he made the sudden announcement he would assume the Reform UK leadership at the beginning of the campaign, Nigel Farage established himself in third place in terms of election coverage. Farage maintained this position throughout the campaign, outdoing rival politicians including other leaders through the press attention he was able to generate.
• Ed Davey attracted enough news interest to take fifth place overall in the media election. In doing so the Liberal Democrat was particularly reliant on television airtime rather than his more modest newspaper appearances.
• Key members of the newly formed government- Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner- all appear in the Top 10 having played significant roles in presenting the Labour case.
• Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly are the only two potential Conservative leadership contenders in the Top 20 whereas their colleagues who made the list have either ruled themselves out as candidates (Jeremy Hunt), lost their seat (Grant Shapps), or have retired (Michael Gove, David Cameron and Boris Johnson) or are about to resign (Rishi Sunak).  

Key findings

• Overall, the levels of direct quotation of Conservative politicians exceeded those for Labour in both TV and newspaper coverage.
• The amount of TV direct quotation for the Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, slightly exceed the time allocated to the Prime Minister.
• The Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the SNP received comparable levels of quotation time in TV coverage, followed by the Greens and Plaid Cymru.
• The situation was very different with print news coverage, where Reform UK was the only party to attain significant levels of direct quotation.

Key findings

• As in 2019, TV news gave more coverage to parties other than Labour and Conservatives than the press. In this campaign, the two main parties accounted for 66 percent of TV appearances compared with 64 percent in GE2019.
• The main changes in TV news reporting occurred in the distribution of coverage among the other parties.
• The Liberal Democrats’ presence of 8 percent of all TV politicians’ news appearances in GE2024 marked a 5 percent reduction from the previous campaign.
• The SNP, too, saw a reduction in their TV news presence, down 2 percent to 5 percent.
• The Green party and Plaid Cymru received small increases in their TV news presence.
• The Reform Party made the most significant gains, attracting 3 percent more appearances than their predecessor, the Brexit Party.
• In Press coverage, the two-party squeeze was even tighter in 2024 than 2019. Eighty five percent of politicians featured in newspaper coverage were from Labour and the Conservatives, 2 percent higher than in GE2019.
• Reform UK dominated the remaining editorial space, accounting for 9 percent of all politician appearances, an increase of 4 percent from GE2019.

Key findings

• The 2024 General Election was marginally less ‘presidentialised’ in its coverage than the General Election of 2019.
• The relative prominence of party leaders reduced by 7 percent to 52 percent of appearances in TV coverage of GE2024 compared with the previous election.
• Party leader prominence reduced by a smaller margin in press coverage down by 3 percent to 39 percent in GE2024.

Key findings

• Female appearances only exceeded male in two categories: ‘voluntary sector’ and ‘citizens’.
• The relatively high figure of female representation in the ‘celebrities’ category is largely due to the high-profile intervention of J K Rowling criticising the Labour party’s policy on gender transition.
• Less than 1 in 5 news sources were women in three categories: ‘politicians’, ‘Business’, and ‘Polling organisations’.

Key findings

• Female representation increased substantially in several of these categories in the 2024 Campaign: ‘Voluntary sector’ up 31 percent; ‘Polling’ up 8 percent; ‘Media’ up 10 percent; ‘Think Tanks’ up 19.3 percent; ‘Celebrities’ up 25.1 percent.
• Other categories have seen more modest increases: ‘Politicians’ up 0.1 percent: ‘Academia’ up 3.5 percent.
• Several categories have seen declines: ‘business’ down 16.1 percent, ‘other professions’ down 4.1 percent.

Key findings

• Coverage of the electoral process (e.g., polls, campaigning activities, strategies etc) was the principal focus of media reporting.
• Several significant political controversies emerged during the campaign, most notable related to the betting allegations against several Conservative party representatives and exposes of the racist opinions of several Reform UK activists. These contributed to making ‘Standards, Corruption, Scandals’ the third most prominent topic in news coverage overall.
• The combination of this category with ‘electoral process’ means that nearly half of all themes coded related to the conduct of, and controversies related to, the campaign rather than substantive policy issues.
• In terms of policy issues, ‘Taxation’ was the most prominent issue overall.
• ‘Immigration/ border controls’ was the next most reported policy issue, followed by ‘Economy/ Business/ Trade’.
• Coverage of ‘minority issues’, in particular debates about gender identities/ ideologies received more than twice the coverage given to ‘Brexit/ European relations’.
• Many topics flagged in opinion polls as of significance to the UK public were sidelined in the media campaign, for example ‘Education’, ‘Environment’, ‘Housing’, and ‘Social Care’.

Key findings

• Coverage of ‘taxation’ fluctuated in intensity but it remained the most prominent substantive policy issue for three of the five weeks sampled, and more or less matched ‘immigration’ in week 1.
• ‘Immigration’ was most prominent in the first week of the media sample, largely as a result of Nigel Farage’s surprise announcement that he was standing for Parliament and leading Reform UK into the campaign.
• The betting scandal that engulfed the Conservative party in week 4 increased the prominence of the ‘standards/ corruption’ category. This coincided with a reduction of more general ‘electoral process’ coverage. The combination of these categories in the last two weeks reduced the relative prominence of the substantive policy issues.

Key findings

• Labour won the ‘press campaign’ with five of the ten endorsements representing nearly half of the total print circulation. The Mirror was even stauncher in its support for Labour and more fulsome backing was also forthcoming from the Guardian this time.
• The three other Labour supporting titles included the Financial Times who shifted its allegiance from the Liberal Democrats. For the first time in over twenty years the Star abandoned its editorial neutrality to endorse the winning party.  After considerable speculation, the Sun gave belated eve of poll support to Labour.
• The Conservative supporting Express, Mail and Telegraph remained loyal to their party albeit with some qualifications of the kind they had outlined in the preceding campaign.
• The Times abandoned the Conservatives but did not endorse another party, preferring to focus on the shortcomings of Labour. The only other paper, the i, continued to make a virtue of remaining neutral during elections.

Key findings

• The blue bar charts in Figure 6.1 represent the growth of what could plausibly be termed the ‘anti-Tory press’ during this election. Controversies surrounding D Day and gambling ensured press criticisms of the Conservatives persisted throughout the campaign. 
• Labour attracted press criticism from the newspapers during this campaign, but this was still noticeably less than the negativity directed at their Conservative rivals.
• Aside from the major two contenders, print media evaluations of the other parties were more limited. Having briefly had a moderately favourable press in the opening week of the campaign, the reporting of Reform UK became more critical as the election drew to a close.

Key findings

• Looking at the ten major dailies it is noteworthy that all but two titles (Mail and Express) were critical of the Conservatives.
• Six newspapers (the FT, Guardian, the i, Mirror, Star and The Times) were more negative towards the Conservatives than any of the other rival contenders.
• The nominally loyal Telegraph exhibited some not insignificant criticism of its favoured party.
• Despite endorsing them just before polling day, the Sun was noticeably more hostile towards Labour rather than the Conservatives in the preceding weeks of the campaign.