The social election that wasn’t: How switchers fooled the polls

    While many predicted this month’s UK General Election would be finally see the influence of newspapers and TV coverage superseded by social media, the shock results showed that old media still holds a bigger sway over much of the population, according to new research.

    The study, from GlobalWebIndex, shows that 40% of voters considered switching parties before the general election and 17% decided who they were going to vote for on the day.

    GlobalWebIndex re-interviewed respondents to their initial survey on who planned to vote for which party and why.

    Here’s some of the key stats:

    The Social Election…That Wasn’t

    Over 70% didn’t look at social networks for information on the election, while under 10% said that friends and family influenced their decision on who to vote for:

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    Indeed media mogul Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter to claim the UK general election “explodes the myth of social media power”.

    “Shy” Conservatives Really Do Exist

    Conservative voters were the least comfortable in sharing their voting preference. Just 35.7% said they were very comfortable revealing their voting intention (score of 5 on a scale of 1-5), compared to 48% for Labour and 51% for UKIP.

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    Ed Miliband failed to convince even his own voters

    • Just 31% felt he ran the best campaign, whereas 41% of Labour voters felt that Nicola Sturgeon did the best.

    • Only 20% of Lib Dem voters felt Nick Clegg ran the best campaign.

    • Strikingly, 96% of SNP voters felt that Nicola Sturgeon ran the best campaign.

    • 66% of Conservative voters thought David Cameron had the best campaign.

    Conservatives Grabbed the Most Undecided Voters

    The groups most likely to have switched to the Conservatives in the last week of the campaign were: older, married & from London/South of England.

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    Methodology

    GlobalWebIndex conducted online research among 1,932 nationally representative voters aged 18-64 between 15th – 18th May. All respondents had previously participated in a questionnaire fielded in late March / early April 2015 where they had been asked to state who they were most likely to vote for at the General Election; allowing them to compare pre-election intentions against actual voting behaviours.

    Take our own Netimperative survey on online voting here:

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