Clegg Still Ahead with Floating Voters, Says MESH

In the UK, LibDem leader Nick Clegg was seen as being the 'most persuasive' of the three party leaders, in last night's televised Leader Debate, according to feedback from the 'MESH Election Experience Monitor'.

Communications research agency MESH Planning and Cranfield School of Management have partnered to evaluate the impact of the many ways 'floating voters' come into contact with the election campaign.

During the election campaign, Cranfield is using the tool to assess the persuasiveness of different channels for each of the main UK political parties among a sample of 1,092 'floating voters'.

Whenever participants come into contact with a political party - whether through advertising, election posters, TV debates, political broadcasts, or word-of-mouth - they text to confirm the party, the occasion, how positive the experience was and how persuasive it was.

Latest results gathered by the 'MESH Election Experience Monitor', have shown that last night's second televised Leaders' Debate received a lower percentage of texts (experiences): -24% versus 32% after last week's event.

While the debate failed to generate the same share of experiences as seen last week (-8% share), the number of leaflet experiences rose (+8% share), even within the 24 hour period surrounding the TV broadcast.

It was a much closer contest with net persuasiveness: +19 for the LibDems (down from +63), +7 for the Conservatives (down from +14) and +6 for Labour (up from -13).

Dr Paul Baines, Reader in Marketing at Cranfield School of Management, confirmed that Clegg is still regarded as the most persuasive of the three leaders.

When it came to persuasiveness of channels, while the format of the debate is still a 'positively persuasive' channel (net + 10%), feedback showed that the Party Election Broadcasts are regarded as the most persuasive form of communication (net +19%).

Latest results are published on www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/election .

Web sites: www.meshplanning.com and www.som.cranfield.ac.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

• MESH Experience
• All news
• MrWeb info