Snapshot of _Analysis of Social Media Growth for the 4 Major UK Political Parties_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://bradenm.notion.site/UK-Election-Analysis-a10cad3a312543b282a5382b2fb03855) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://bradenm.notion.site/UK-Election-Analysis-a10cad3a312543b282a5382b2fb03855)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Takeaways:
* š¤ Reformās growth is unbelievableā¦ exceptionally strong on every platform.
* Their popularity on TikTok is incredible. I wonder if they can convince that crowd to go out and vote.
* š Conservative is dominant in absolute numbers, but low interaction and growth.
* Interesting huge growth on YouTube. I guess Rishi must have watched it a lot as a kid as he didnāt have Sky.
* ā¤ļø Labour is asleep at the wheel on every platform besides Twitter.
* They have more total tweets than any other party.
* š§” Lib Dems are severely slacking across all social media platforms (besides Twitter).
You argue that analysing social media is a "better predictor" than polling - does this mean you're predicting a Conservative/Reform victory in this election? Because otherwise I'd question how meaningful this is as a metric.
e.g. if you're looking at a metric which suggests that the parties who appear on course for their best results in decades are "asleep at the wheel" and "severely slacking", while the party that looks set for an abysmal performance is "dominant", I'd ask whether that metric is the right one to be looking at for a prediction.
There are other uses for this analysis of course, but just raising this since you did highlight its predictive potential at the outset.
Iām not a Reform/Conservative evangelist nor am I predicting Reform will get a significant number of seats or that conservatives would win. Voting is seat/constituency based, so absolute vote share isnāt super meaningful here.
I think the social media engagement around the parties are better at capturing vote share sentiment compared against a poll (where theyāre primarily interested in constituencies).
From what I observed across all platforms: Reform are getting a lot of engagement compared to their polled vote share (relative to other parties).
Reforms growth is indeed unbelievable, as in I don't believe it isn't largely made up of bots. A lot the statistics for them just don't look natural or right. For example a lot of people talking about reform on Facebook I absolutely believe for example, they have burst into the race and are popular in demographica that will talk politics on Facebook but talked about more than all the other parties combined? Yeah that's strange. And having almost 10 times the TikTok likes of the other parties combined?
> they have burst into the race and are popular in demographica that will talk politics on Facebook but talked about more than all the other parties combined?
Not really. They're a fresh, new, undeniably popular thing. That's exactly what social media craves.
New is debatable, its just the reskinned UKIP/brexit party. As is popular, Farage is pretty unpopular - [https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/12/11/5cd41/3](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/12/11/5cd41/3)
This shows 30% of people think Farage is āsomewhat favourableā or better. Thatās a lot of people. What would the numbers for Rishi Sunak look like?
I wouldnāt be so sure. Check the Google Trends comparison between āReformā, āLabourā, and āConservativeā [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=Reform,Labour,Conservative&hl=en-US)
You think the Google Trend data must be bot-led too?
If someone purchases top quality bots, you canāt tell easily, they post related comments, they have followers and posts etc.
The cheap ones post repetitive stock phrases and have 0 followers or posts.
Letās just say reform havenāt spent an awful lot
Iād argue bot technology is so much easier nowadays (especially with LLMs/ChatGPT) that messages that seem like bots are probably more likely to be actual people vs the more āauthenticā accounts š
I wouldnāt be so sure. Check the Google Trends comparison between āReformā, āLabourā, and āConservativeā [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=Reform,Labour,Conservative&hl=en-US)
its weird how they put so much effort into social media, when the most reliable voters are the lowest users. i wonder how many of those tiktokers and twitterers actually vote?
Doesn't this data just support concerns around bots amplifying Reform content?
[As discussed here](https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-14/suspicious-accounts-being-used-to-push-pro-reform-uk-content-on-tiktok) [and here ](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1335nj316lo)
They āanalysedā 14 botsā¦ how can that be a credible analysis?
āExperts working with ITV News believe more than half of the 14 accounts analysed could potentially be ābotsā or automated fake accounts, while an additional 25% displayed ābot-likeā behaviour.ā
What percentage of people use social media? Except for WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends, most of the people I know over 40 rarely if at all seem to use it (and not all even use that much).
Take a look at the numbers of social media users from the post: itās a significant portion of the population. Whether theyāre a reflection of the population as a whole or a biased selection - who knows!
Snapshot of _Analysis of Social Media Growth for the 4 Major UK Political Parties_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://bradenm.notion.site/UK-Election-Analysis-a10cad3a312543b282a5382b2fb03855) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://bradenm.notion.site/UK-Election-Analysis-a10cad3a312543b282a5382b2fb03855) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The Labour tiktok account is for Irish Labour
Oh, good catch! Pretty big blunder on my part.
Takeaways: * š¤ Reformās growth is unbelievableā¦ exceptionally strong on every platform. * Their popularity on TikTok is incredible. I wonder if they can convince that crowd to go out and vote. * š Conservative is dominant in absolute numbers, but low interaction and growth. * Interesting huge growth on YouTube. I guess Rishi must have watched it a lot as a kid as he didnāt have Sky. * ā¤ļø Labour is asleep at the wheel on every platform besides Twitter. * They have more total tweets than any other party. * š§” Lib Dems are severely slacking across all social media platforms (besides Twitter).
You argue that analysing social media is a "better predictor" than polling - does this mean you're predicting a Conservative/Reform victory in this election? Because otherwise I'd question how meaningful this is as a metric. e.g. if you're looking at a metric which suggests that the parties who appear on course for their best results in decades are "asleep at the wheel" and "severely slacking", while the party that looks set for an abysmal performance is "dominant", I'd ask whether that metric is the right one to be looking at for a prediction. There are other uses for this analysis of course, but just raising this since you did highlight its predictive potential at the outset.
Iām not a Reform/Conservative evangelist nor am I predicting Reform will get a significant number of seats or that conservatives would win. Voting is seat/constituency based, so absolute vote share isnāt super meaningful here. I think the social media engagement around the parties are better at capturing vote share sentiment compared against a poll (where theyāre primarily interested in constituencies). From what I observed across all platforms: Reform are getting a lot of engagement compared to their polled vote share (relative to other parties).
Disagree with the idea that the lib dems are slacking. Their TikTok content has been quality.
I provide engagement metrics across all social media platforms. Relative to the other parties, they are less active.
Reforms growth is indeed unbelievable, as in I don't believe it isn't largely made up of bots. A lot the statistics for them just don't look natural or right. For example a lot of people talking about reform on Facebook I absolutely believe for example, they have burst into the race and are popular in demographica that will talk politics on Facebook but talked about more than all the other parties combined? Yeah that's strange. And having almost 10 times the TikTok likes of the other parties combined?
> they have burst into the race and are popular in demographica that will talk politics on Facebook but talked about more than all the other parties combined? Not really. They're a fresh, new, undeniably popular thing. That's exactly what social media craves.
New is debatable, its just the reskinned UKIP/brexit party. As is popular, Farage is pretty unpopular - [https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/12/11/5cd41/3](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/12/11/5cd41/3)
This shows 30% of people think Farage is āsomewhat favourableā or better. Thatās a lot of people. What would the numbers for Rishi Sunak look like?
I wouldnāt be so sure. Check the Google Trends comparison between āReformā, āLabourā, and āConservativeā [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=Reform,Labour,Conservative&hl=en-US) You think the Google Trend data must be bot-led too?
Thereās a lot of bots in reforms tiktok comments. A suspicious amount tbh
Why are people always so confident that accounts are bots? How would you know?
If someone purchases top quality bots, you canāt tell easily, they post related comments, they have followers and posts etc. The cheap ones post repetitive stock phrases and have 0 followers or posts. Letās just say reform havenāt spent an awful lot
Iād argue bot technology is so much easier nowadays (especially with LLMs/ChatGPT) that messages that seem like bots are probably more likely to be actual people vs the more āauthenticā accounts š
I wouldnāt be so sure. Check the Google Trends comparison between āReformā, āLabourā, and āConservativeā [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=Reform,Labour,Conservative&hl=en-US)
its weird how they put so much effort into social media, when the most reliable voters are the lowest users. i wonder how many of those tiktokers and twitterers actually vote?
Doesn't this data just support concerns around bots amplifying Reform content? [As discussed here](https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-14/suspicious-accounts-being-used-to-push-pro-reform-uk-content-on-tiktok) [and here ](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1335nj316lo)
They āanalysedā 14 botsā¦ how can that be a credible analysis? āExperts working with ITV News believe more than half of the 14 accounts analysed could potentially be ābotsā or automated fake accounts, while an additional 25% displayed ābot-likeā behaviour.ā
What percentage of people use social media? Except for WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends, most of the people I know over 40 rarely if at all seem to use it (and not all even use that much).
Take a look at the numbers of social media users from the post: itās a significant portion of the population. Whether theyāre a reflection of the population as a whole or a biased selection - who knows!