When the Star aligned: how the press ‘voted’

Prof Dominic Wring

Professor of Political Communication, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, Loughborough University.

Prof David Deacon

Professor of Communication and Media Analysis, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, Loughborough University.

UK Election 2024

Section 7: News and journalism

73. Why the press still matters (Prof Steven Barnett)
74. When the Star aligned: how the press ‘voted’ (Prof Dominic Wring, Prof David Deacon)
75. Visual depictions of leaders and losers in the (still influential) print press (Prof Erik Bucy)
76. Towards more assertive impartiality? Fact-checking on BBC television news (Prof Stephen Cushion)
77. The outsize influence of the conservative press in election campaigns (Prof Dan Stevens, Prof Susan Banducci, Prof Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Dr Laszlo Horvath)
78. GB News – not breaking any rules… (Prof Ivor Gaber)
79. Vogue’s stylish relationship to politics (Dr Chrysi Dagoula)
80. Tiptoeing around immigration has tangible consequences (Dr Maria Kyriakidou, Dr Iñaki Garcia-Blanco)
81. A Taxing Campaign (Prof David Deacon et al)
82. Not the Sun wot won it: what Murdoch’s half-hearted, last-minute endorsements mean for Labour (Dr John Jewell)
83. Is this the first podcast election? (Carl Hartley, Prof Stephen Coleman)
84. A numbers game (Prof Paul Bradshaw)
85. Election 2024 and the remarkable absence of media in a mediated spectacle (Prof Lee Edwards)
86. 2024: the great election turn-off (Prof Des Freedman)

If a party lost nearly half its support during a single parliament, diminishing media interest in the politicians concerned might be expected to follow. But despite the precipitous decline of print circulations since the 2019 General Election (See Table 1), broadcasters have not abandoned newspapers as arbiters of what is deemed newsworthy. During the 2024 Election flagship programmes like BBC Radio 4’s Today, ITV’s Peston, and Sky News’ press review continued using frontpages to frame their reporting of the campaign. Famously British newspapers are not subject to impartiality rules of the kind that regulate their counterparts on television and radio. The press therefore can and does offer highly partisan coverage during elections and of the kind that broadcasters regularly use to help them explore controversies. This continuing reverence for print journalism, especially in hard copy format, underlines the enduring influence of newspapers even while their circulations are in freefall. More broadly this reflects the way that legacy brands owned by News UK, Reach and others continue to matter in the UK media landscape despite – or arguably because of – audience fragmentation.

An overwhelming majority of national newspapers normally endorse a party during elections. In the late 1990s a once dominant ‘Tory press’ gave way to the ‘Tony press’ during the Blair era but this break with tradition was short-lived. In 2019 half of the national dailies supported the Conservatives and collectively these five titles accounted for nearly three-quarters of total print circulation at the time. Although Labour received the same number of endorsements in 2024, the newspapers involved represent less than 50% of combined (and much diminished) sales. The potential impact of this shift in press allegiances was not, however, merely a psychological boost or setback for the rival parties concerned: online the Guardian, Mail, Sun and Mirror each boast digital audiences of over twenty million and are only outdone in this respect by the BBC news website.

Table 1 lists the electoral preferences of the ten paid-for UK wide dailies as formally set out in their editorial endorsements. Commonly analysis of this kind focuses on which newspapers supported which parties without considering the strength of these allegiances. Table 1 therefore seeks to acknowledge the intensity of the partisan attachments and not just their electoral preferences. Only one newspaper, the staunchly pro-Labour Mirror, published an editorial that was unconditional in offering its ‘very strong’ endorsement. Although the traditionally loyal Express, Mail and Telegraph remained ‘strong’ Conservatives, all three nonetheless qualified their support through acknowledging some of the party’s shortcomings in office. Critically none of them backed Nigel Farage despite their shared ideological outlook and, in the case of Express, the presence of leading Reform UK member Anne Widdecombe as a columnist. And while the Guardian and Financial Times offered criticism of Labour in their endorsements of the party, both statements were noticeably warmer towards their choice than they had been in 2019. The repositioning of the FT also meant the Liberal Democrats lost the backing of their only newspaper supporter.

The i continues to make a virtue of the paper’s now established practice of staying politically neutral including at election times. Interestingly The Times effectively did the same this time having strongly endorsed the Conservatives in 2019. Fellow News UK title The Sun also shifted its position in declaring for Labour having previously denounced the party as ‘extremists’ in the last election. Although the timing of the title’s eve of poll conversion was somewhat dramatic, the accompanying ‘weak’ endorsement was markedly less so, replete as it was with various caveats. By contrast the Star was more sincere in expressing its partisan allegiance. Having been acclaimed for comparing the waning premiership of Liz Truss to a wilting lettuce, the paper felt sufficiently emboldened to abandon its longstanding policy of neutrality in this election. The formal endorsement that followed, simply entitled ‘New start is needed’, pithily encapsulated the core Labour message dwelling as it did on the Conservatives’ record in office. Ultimately the repositioning of the Star proved to be emblematic of the wider change afoot in the 2024 Election.