UK Election Analysis 2024:
Media, Voters and the Campaign
Featuring more than 100 contributions from leading UK academics, this publication captures the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the 2024 UK General Election from the cutting edge of media and politics research.
Published 10 days after the election, contributions are short and accessible for a wide range of audiences. As with our previous reports, authors provide authoritative analysis of the campaign, including research findings or new theoretical insights; to bring readers original ways of understanding the election.
We hope this makes for a vibrant, informative and engaging read.
Editorial team:
Prof Daniel Jackson, Prof Katy Parry, Dr Emily Harmer, Prof Darren Lilleker, Prof Julie Firmstone, Prof Scott Wright, Prof Einar Thorsen
The Election Analysis series is published by the Centre for Comparative Politics & Media Research at Bournemouth University.
The 2024 report was prepared in collaboration with:
Political Communication Research Group (University of Leeds), Centre for Digital Politics, Media and Democracy (University of Liverpool), Political Studies Association, and the Conversation UK.
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Contents
Introduction (Prof Daniel Jackson, Prof Katy Parry, Dr Emily Harmer, Prof Darren Lilleker, Prof Julie Firmstone, Prof Scott Wright, Prof Einar Thorsen)
Democracy and representation
1. Public anxiety and the electoral process (Prof Barry Richards)
2. How Nigel Farage opened the door to No. 10 for Keir Starmer (Prof Pippa Norris)
3. The performance of the electoral system (Prof Alan Renwick)
4. Tory downfall is democracy rectifying its mistakes (Prof Stephen Barber)
5. Votes at 16 and decent citizenship education could create a politically aware generation (Dr Ben Kisby, Dr Lee Jerome)
6. “An election about us but not for us”: the lack of communication for young people during GE2024 (Dr James Dennis)
7. Election timing: masterstroke or risky gamble? (Prof Sarah Birch)
8. The dog that didn’t bark? Electoral integrity and administration from voter ID to postal votes (Prof Alistair Clark)
9. A political gamble? How licit and illicit betting permeated the campaign (Dr Matthew Wall)
10. Ethnic diversity in politics is the new normal in Britain (Prof Maria Sobolewska)
11. Bullshit and Lies on the campaign trail: do party campaigns reflect the post-truth age? (Prof Darren Lilleker)
12. Stoking the culture wars: the risks of a more hostile form of polarised politics (Dr Jen Birks)
Voters, polls and results
13. Forecasting a multiparty majoritarian election with a volatile electorate (Dr Hannah Bunting)
14. The emerging infrastructure of public opinion (Dr Nick Anstead)
15. A moving target? Voter segmentation in the 2024 British General Election (Prof Rosie Campbell)
16. Don’t vote, it only encourages them? Turnout in the 2024 Election (Prof Charles Pattie)
17. Cartographic perspectives of the 2024 General Election (Prof Benjamin Hennig)
18. Gender and vote choice: early reflections (Dr Ceri Fowler)
19. Changing Pattern amongst Muslim voters: the Labour Party, Gaza and voter volatility (Dr Parveen Akhtar)
20. Religion and voting behaviour in the 2024 General Election (Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, Dr Stuart Fox)
21. Failure to connect: the Conservative Party and young voters (Dr Stephanie Luke)
22. Youthquake for the progressive left: making sense of the collapse of youth support for the Conservatives (Prof James Sloam, Prof Matt Henn)
23. Values in the valence election (Prof Paula Surridge)
24. Tactical voting: why is it such a big part of British elections? (Thomas Lockwood)
The nations and regions
25. Have voters fallen out of love with the SNP? (Dr Lynn Bennie)
26. The spectre of Sturgeon still looms large in gendered coverage in Scotland (Melody House, Dr Fiona McKay)
27. The personalisation of Scottish politics in a UK General Election (Dr Michael Higgins, Dr Maike Dinger)
28. Competence, change and continuity: a tale of two nations (Dr Will Kitson)
29. Election success, but problems remain for Labour in Wales (Dr Nye Davies)
30. Four ways in which Northern Ireland’s own seismic results will affect the new Parliament (Prof Katy Hayward)
31. Bringing People together or pulling them apart? What Facebook ads say about the NI campaign (Dr Paul Reilly)
32. A New Dawn For Levelling Up? (Prof Arianna Giovannini)
33. Who defines Britain? National identity at the heart of the 2024 UK General Election (Dr Tabitha Baker)
Parties and the campaign
34. A changed but over-staged Labour Party and the political marketing weaknesses behind Starmer’s win (Prof Jennifer Lees-Marshment)
35. To leaflet or not to leaflet? The question of election leafleting in Sunderland Central (Prof Angela Smith, Dr Mike Pearce)
36. Beyond ‘my dad was a toolmaker’: what it’s really like to be working class in parliament (Dr Vladimir Bortun)
37. The unforced errors of foolish men: gender, race and the calculus of harm (Prof Karen Ross)
38. Election 2024 and rise of Reform UK: the beginning of the end of the Conservatives? (Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman)
39. The Weakening of the Blue Wall (Prof Pete Dorey)
40. The Conservative party, 1832-2024: an obituary (Dr Mark Garnett)
41. Bouncing back: the Liberal Democrat campaign (Prof Peter Sloman)
42. The Greens: riding two horses (Prof Neil Carter, Dr Mitya Pearson)
43. Party organisations and the campaign (Dr Danny Rye)
44. Local campaign messaging at the 2024 General Election (Dr Siim Trumm, Prof Caitlin Milazzo)
45. The value of getting personal: reflecting upon the role of personal branding in the General Election (Dr Jenny Lloyd)
46. Which constituencies were visited by each party leader and what this told us about their campaigns (Dr Hannah Bunting, Joely Santa Cruz)
47. The culture wars and the 2024 General Election campaign (Prof John Steel)
48. “Rishi’s D-Day Disaster”: authority, leadership and British military commemoration (Dr Natalie Jester)
49. Party election broadcasts: the quest for authenticity (Dr Vincent Campbell)
Policy and strategy
50. It’s the cost-of-living-crisis, stupid! (Prof Aeron Davis)
51. The last pre-war vote? Defence and foreign policy in the 2024 Election (Dr Russell Foster)
52. The 2024 UK general election and the absence of foreign policy (Dr Victoria Honeyman)
53. Fractious consensus: defence policy at the 2024 General Election (Dr Ben Jones)
54. The psycho-politics of climate denial in the 2024 UK election (Prof Candida Yates, Dr Jenny Alexander)
55. How will the Labour government fare and what should they do better? (Prof Rick Stafford and team)
56. Finding the environment: climate obstructionism and environmental movements on TikTok (Dr Abi Rhodes)
57. Irregular migration: ‘Stop the boats’ vs ‘Smash the Gangs’ (Prof Alex Balch)
58. The sleeping dog of ‘Europe: UK relations with the EU as a non-issue (Prof Simon Usherwood)
59. Labour: a very conservative housing manifesto (Prof Becky Tunstall)
60. Why the Labour Government must abolish the two-child benefit limit policy (Dr Yekaterina Chzhen)
61. Take the next right: mainstream parties’ positions on gender and LGBTQ+ equality issues (Dr Louise Luxton)
The digital campaign
62. Local news and information on candidates was insufficient (Dr Martin Moore, Dr Gordon Neil Ramsay)
63. The Al election that wasn’t – yet (Prof Helen Margetts)
64. Al-generated images: how citizens depicted politicians and society (Niamh Cashell)
65. The threat to democracy that wasn’t? Four types of Al-generated synthetic media in the General Election (Dr Liam McLoughlin)
66. Shitposting meets Generative Artificial Intelligence and ‘deep fakes’ at the 2024 General Election (Dr Rosalynd Southern)
67. Shitposting the General Election: why this campaign felt like one long meme (SE Harman, Dr Matthew Wall)
68. Winning voters’ hearts and minds… through reels and memes?! How #GE24 unfolded on TikTok (Dr Aljosha Karim Schapals)
69. Debating the election in “Non-political” Third Spaces: the case of Gransnet (Prof Scott Wright et al)
70. Which social networks did political parties use most in 2024? (Dr Richard Fletcher)
71. Facebook’s role in the General Election: still relevant in a more fragmented information environment (Prof Andrea Carson, Dr Felix M. Simon)
72. Farage on TikTok: the perfect populist platform (Prof Karin Wahl-Jorgensen)
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 and Dr Nathan Ritchie)
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, Dr 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. Data journalism in the UK election: a numbers game (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)
Personality politics and popular culture
87. Ed Davey: Towards a Liberal Populism? (Dr Tom Sharkey, Dr Sophie Quirk)
88. Why Nigel Farage’s anti-media election interference claims are so dangerous (Dr Lone Sorensen)
89. Nigel Farage and the political circus (Dr Neil Ewen)
90. Binface, Beany and Beyond: humorous candidates in the 2024 General Election (Prof Scott Wright et al)
91. What Corbyn support reveals about how Starmer’s Labour won big (Prof Cornel Sandvoss, Dr Benjamin Litherland, Dr Joseph Andrew Smith)
92. “Well that was dignified, wasn’t it?”: floor apportionment and interaction in the televised debates (Dr Sylvia Shaw)
93. TV debates: beyond winners and losers (Prof Stephen Coleman)
94. Is our television debate coverage finally starting to match up to multi-party politics? (Dr Louise Thompson)
95. Tetchiness meets disenchantment: capturing the contrasting political energies of the campaign (Prof Beth Johnson, Prof Katy Parry)
96. “We’re just normal men”: football and the performance of authentic leadership (Dr Ellen Watts)
97. ‘Make the friendship bracelets’: gendered imagery in candidates’ self-presentations on the campaign trail (Dr Caroline Leicht)
98. Weeping in Wetherspoons: generative Al and the right/left image battle on X (Simon Popple)
99. An entertaining election? Popular culture as politics (Prof John Street)
100. Changing key, but keeping time: the music of Election 2024 (Dr Adam Behr)
101. Truth or dare: the political veracity game (Prof John Corner)
Previous election and referendum reports
For the 2024 report we partnered with the Conversation UK to publish articles in the lead up to the election and link to the most recent election articles on their website.
Is Reform really pulling ahead of Labour? Polling expert on what to really make of Farage’s supposed lead
Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex 12:47 on 13 December, 2024
Looking at how votes were distributed in 2024 offers a more reassuring picture.Low turnout in the 2024 election may have been due to undecided voters being overwhelmed by choice
Hannah Bunting, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative British Politics and Co-director of The Elections Centre, University of Exeter 10:19 on 22 November, 2024
With so many parties on offer, voters are overwhelmed by choice – and many are simply staying home.Tough news for protesting farmers: Labour doesn’t actually need their votes
Michael Woods, Professor of Human Geography, Aberystwyth University 10:12 on 22 November, 2024
Farmers don’t make up that much of the Labour vote – but that doesn’t mean the government can afford to be complacent about rural communities.UK election: Reform and Green members campaigned more online – but pounded the pavements less
Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London 12:27 on 27 September, 2024
It’s party conference season in Britain, a chance for members to meet and talk through their successes and failures from the election campaign – and start talking strategy for the next. Perhaps inevitably…Why Rachel Reeves can’t seem to make her ‘£22bn black hole’ narrative convincing
Alex Prior, Lecturer in Politics with International Relations, London South Bank University 12:43 on 2 August, 2024
The row is not just about immediate spending pressures – it’s the key to future electoral success for both parties.Three steps to mending relations with the Muslim voters who turned away from Labour in 2024
Julian Hargreaves, Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Criminology, City St George's, University of London 12:56 on 1 August, 2024
Repairing the damage will take more than leadership in Israel-Palestine.Public widely condemns abuse of politicians – even those they strongly disagree with
Rob Johns, Professor of Politics, University of Southampton 16:52 on 30 July, 2024
Reassuring news after a nasty election campaign for some candidates.Keir Starmer needs to answer these pressing questions about how he will govern
Geoff Mulgan, Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation, UCL 07:52 on 26 July, 2024
The British state is not a Rolls Royce just waiting for a new driver – it needs a thorough overhaul.After Westminster triumph, Sinn Féin seeks to bounce back in Ireland
Jonathan Arlow, Marie Curie Research Fellow, University of Liverpool 12:38 on 22 July, 2024
Sinn Féin is now bigger than any single unionist party in Westminster but it needs to regain momentum in the Republic of Ireland ahead of elections later this year.How Britain’s new gen Z MPs could shake up the House of Commons
Wang Leung (Kiwi) Ting, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, University of Reading 12:51 on 19 July, 2024
Young representatives pay special attention to reflecting the concerns of young people.Young people led surge for smaller parties but no Reform ‘youthquake’, says UK election survey
Stuart Fox, Lecturer in British Politics, University of Exeter 15:28 on 12 July, 2024
Voters have been steadily shifting away from the two major parties for years.Election 2024 polls were wide of the mark on Labour’s margin of victory – this is what may have happened
Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex 15:10 on 12 July, 2024
We had more MRP polls than ever before in 2024 but accuracy varied greatly between producers.Sunak’s anti-net zero gamble failed – signs suggest bold climate action can win elections
Rebecca Willis, Professor in Energy and Climate Governance, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University 16:57 on 11 July, 2024
Here’s what the 2024 UK election revealed about public appetite for tackling climate change.What a House of Commons with fewer privately educated MPs could mean for the UK
Wang Leung (Kiwi) Ting, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, University of Reading 11:40 on 11 July, 2024
Just under a quarter of the new parliament went to private school.French and British politics experts discuss what their election results mean for the right – podcast
Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation 09:41 on 11 July, 2024
Tim Bale and Safia Dahani discuss the French and UK election results on The Conversation Weekly podcast.Voter turnout lowest in decades – an expected result and electoral rules may have played a role
Toby James, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of East Anglia 15:43 on 9 July, 2024
Voters may have lost confidence in candidates and parties.Labour has a chance to finally insulate Britain – but there’s a big hole in its plans
Ran Boydell, Associate Professor in Sustainable Development, Heriot-Watt University 12:22 on 9 July, 2024
The new government aims to retrofit five million homes in five years – while footing 10% of the bill.Labour is divided over Israel and Palestine – as prime minister, Keir Starmer has a difficult line to tread
James Vaughan, Lecturer in International History, Aberystwyth University 15:27 on 8 July, 2024
Starmer’s formula of moderation and caution about the Gaza conflict is unlikely to satisfy some of his backbenchersStarmer must seize the chance to rethink the UK-Europe relationship – here’s how he can do it
Nick Whittaker, Subject Lead in Social Sciences & Law, University of Sussex 09:32 on 8 July, 2024
Migration and trade are two areas where Britain could have a leadership role in Europe.Keir Starmer appoints historic cabinet with record number of women – now comes the hard part: governing
Nicholas Allen, Professor of Politics, Royal Holloway University of London 09:18 on 6 July, 2024
Starmer’s cabinet is relatively inexperienced but the most gender-balanced in UK history.The six most urgent problems facing the UK that Starmer’s new government needs to fix
Alex Nurse, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Liverpool 16:13 on 5 July, 2024
Labour’s manifesto was largely predicated on economic growth, but the new government faces several problems too serious to wait for growth to kick in.What Labour’s election means for women: the good and the bad
Rainbow Murray, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London 16:13 on 5 July, 2024
The newly elected parliament includes 264 women, passing 40% for the first time.The UK’s new prime minister Keir Starmer – hoping for a Democrat in the White House, preparing for Trump
Christopher Featherstone, Associate Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of York 14:59 on 5 July, 2024
The new British government has been in talks with both Democrats and Republicans for a while already.Nigel Farage, Greens and 72 Liberal Democrats: inside Britain’s new multi-party parliament
Louise Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Manchester 13:34 on 5 July, 2024
The Liberal Democrats are up to 72 seats and the SNP are heading to the back – plus some green Greens are headed to the green benches.Keir Starmer: three warnings from history for Labour’s seventh British prime minister
Colm Murphy, Lecturer in British Politics, Queen Mary University of London 10:19 on 5 July, 2024
When Labour has gained power, these three problems have reared their heads.
