How are the parties’ messages landing?
Especially with swing voters?
Whether they’re visiting a factory or falling off a paddleboard, the party leaders have been hitting the campaign trail hard. And while they’re at it, they’re sharing their parties’ messages and illustrating their visions for the future.
So what do voters make of those messages?
During the second weekend of this election campaign, we surveyed 2,011 British adults, asking which parties they currently associate with some of the key phrases, words, and ideas of this election cycle so far.
1. Patriotism and care for the country: This is a perennial messaging focus of elections, as party leaders attempt to link themselves closely to national identity.
When leaders are trying to persuade voters that they can lead a country, they are also trying to demonstrate how much they love their country. Linking your party leader with the positive aspects of a national identity helps voters see that person as the natural leader of the country. So this is always a major part of election messaging.
We tested which party is currently seen as the most patriotic or most concerned about the country. To assess how those phrases or frameworks of patriotism versus “care for the country” impacted which parties people thought of, we ran this as an A/B test. Respondents only saw one of these two questions, and therefore we can conclude if the question formulation impacts how people respond.
Approximately the same number of voters think that the Conservatives, Labour, and Reform UK are the most patriotic political party (19%, 22%, and 18% respectively). Among their own voters, only Reform UK supporters consistently believe their party is the most patriotic, while around half of Conservative voters (56%) and slightly fewer Labour voters (46%) think their respective parties are the most patriotic. Swing voters were most likely to select Reform UK (32%), while smaller proportions thought Labour (18%) and the Tories (15%) were the most patriotic. Only 3% of voters overall think the Liberal Democrats are the most patriotic, and this only includes about 1 in 10 of their own supporters.
However, when this question is phrased in terms of “caring about the country the most”, Labour leads again, with about a third. A fraction of the population each view the Conservatives (15%), Reform UK (12%) and the Green Party (10%) as the party that cares most about the country, but the Liberal Democrats still perform poorly in this question iteration with 4% selecting them. Among swing voters, Labour performs about as well as Reform UK, with 26% saying Labour cares the most about the UK and 29% selecting Reform UK. Swing voters were especially unlikely to say that the Conservatives care most about the country - only 8% of swing voters responded that way.
2. Stability: Both the Conservatives and Labour have laid claims to stability in their messaging.
Painting themselves as a source of stability and their opponents as agents of chaos, both the Conservatives and Labour have leaned on this concept in the early weeks of the campaign, but when asked which party offers more stability for the country going forward, about twice as many voters associate stability with Labour (41%) than those who associate it with the Conservatives (20%). This is strongly linked to vote intention, with about 85% of each parties’ supporters thinking their party will provide stability - no shocker there.
Swing voters, on the other hand, are more surprising. Voters who voted Conservative in 2019, but have switched away from them since are much more likely than the general public to see Reform UK as a potential source of stability, with about a quarter of those voters associating Reform UK with stability, compared to less than 10% of the general population. About a third of swing voters think Labour will provide more stability for the country going forward, which is higher than any other party with those voters, but at a lower rate than the general electorate, where over 40% think Labour offers more stability. This is one of the biggest gaps between the general population and swing voters within this survey.
3. The working class: This group of voters has been a target audience as well as a messaging focus for both parties.
Whether it’s the Conservatives’ previous Red Wall victories or Labour’s claims to be the party of the working people, the working class has been a major focus of electoral analysis in recent years. In this election, the working class is a target yet again for both parties. In order to assess if voters view policy differently to a general focus on the working class, we ran these questions as another A/B test.
In both question formulations, voters view Labour as the party most focused on the working class. Whether we ask about enacting policies or more generally “looking out” for them, nearly half of the population (46%) thinks Labour is currently the party who will do best by those voters. This remains true among swing voters with about 40% selecting Labour in both samples.The bigger difference with the general population is yet again in terms of Reform UK. Swing voters are more likely than the overall public to say that Reform UK will enact policies that benefit the working class (25%) as well as look out for the working class (21%). Interestingly, one question produced more “none of the above” responses than the other. When asked which political party is looking out for the working class, nearly 20% of the British population said none, and that was up to about a quarter of swing voters. Yet only 1 in 10 within the overall population thought that none of the parties would enact policies that benefit the working class. As always, message framing matters.
4. A clear plan of bold action: This tagline has been used prominently in materials and statements from the Conservatives.
The tagline rolled out by the Tories last week, however, appears to be more associated with Labour than the Conservatives. A third of the population think the Labour Party has “a clear plan of bold action”, while only 16% would say that describes the Conservatives. The key swing voters of this election view this line slightly differently. A quarter of them think Reform UK have a “clear plan of bold action”, nearly 30% associate it with Labour, but about a quarter say this applies to “none of the above”.
5. No conviction, no courage, and no plan: This attack has been used by the Conservatives against Labour.
The attack currently being hurled at Labour by the Tories… is in fact more associated with the Conservative Party itself. A third of the population (32%) would describe the Conservative Party as having “no conviction, no courage, and no plan”, while fewer (about 1 in 5 voters, 21%) associate it with Labour. Notably, very few voters - swing or otherwise - associate this attack with Reform UK. So any candidates with a strong Reform UK contender should look elsewhere for an effective attack.
6. Change.: This tagline has been prominently used by Labour in the first two weeks of the campaign, and it taps into a perpetually recurring theme in elections: appetite for change versus the stability of the status quo.
Unsurprisingly, the governing party for the last 14 years did not fare well here. The word “change” is already fairly strongly linked with Labour. Over 40% of the public as well as 40+% of swing voters say they associate that word with Labour.
While it’s a considerably smaller percentage, this finding should not go overlooked: 14% of the overall population currently associate “change” with Reform UK. That association with Reform UK jumps up to 30% when you look at the voters who have switched from the Conservatives since the 2019 election.
In any election, the key to messaging is repetition. After only a couple weeks of this campaign, none of the parties have yet had enough time to say their message over and over and over again, and even in a longer campaign, message discipline and consistency can be difficult in a chaotic environment with dozens of political messengers.
While none of the messages we tested are currently being touted by Reform UK, these results indicate a consistent chunk of voters already associate them with a number of positive messages, especially patriotism, care for the nation, and to a lesser degree, change. That’s a powerful combo. As their campaign ramps up, it will be telling to see which messages they rely on most.
By Polling Day, we will be able to see whether the Tories have re-claimed any of this messaging space, but even if they do, Labour has clearly staked out ground in the “change” space, which currently appears to be a one word winning message for them.
You can find the tables for this poll here.
Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash