At MHP, we monitor millions of conversations for clients every day. This year, we decided to bring that function to bear on the party conference season here in the UK. We’ve been working with our partners Synthesio – a digital monitoring tool that measures sentiment across online and social media – to monitor the online conversation across the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative party conferences. Throughout all three we have measured the level of debate and discussion across all social media platforms, including Twitter, mainstream media, blogs and forums. Our analysis breaks down and compares the share of voice and sentiment between all three conferences, the leaders and specific policy areas. We’ve also analysed the top ten political blogs that have driven conversation at conference.

1. @MHPPolitics
social media
analysis of the party
conference season
A report by MHP communications
October 2013

2. As the dust settles on yet another long and tiring
party conference season, MHP – in collaboration with
Synthesio – have been looking back at the social media
coverage of all three conferences and the reaction they
received across different social media platforms.
Conservative Party Conference generated the most conversation on twitter:
Of this conversation – and where opinion was expressed – the sentiment breakdown was as follows:
19%
22%59%
#ldconf 26,725
#lab13 31,558
#cpc13 82,434
Positive
Negative
Positive
Negative
Positive
Negative
#ldconf #lab13 #cpc13
63% 50% 51%
50% 49%37%
Share of voice
MHP tweets
from
conference

3. Over 21,000 social media comments referenced David Cameron, more
than double mentioning Ed Miliband and four time more than Nick Clegg.
Nick Clegg 4,986
Ed Miliband 8,950
David Cameron 21,082
Number of social media comments
14%
26%60%
The Leader’s are still king
David
Cameron
21,082
Nick
Clegg
4,986
Ed
Miliband
8,950
MHP tweets
from
conference

4. Analysing the volume of social media comment around specific
politicians, it is clear that the party leaders dominate the traffic, with
their Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet colleagues struggling to get noticed.
However, traffic is not always positive. As we can see below (excluding factual neutral
comments), social media traffic about David Cameron over the Conservative Party Conference
remained on average negative. While comments about Ed Miliband became on average more
negative as his conference went on. Only Nick Clegg saw a spike in favourable tweets during
his Party Conference.
Social media sentiment of the Party Leaders over conference
Ed Miliband
Shadow Cabinet
David Cameron
Conservative
frontbenchers
Nick Clegg MP
Leading Lib Dems
Ed versus the rest David versus the restNick versus the rest
70%
30%
56%
44% 40%
60%
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
Netpositive/negativesocialmediacomment%
Sat Sun Mon Tues Weds
80
Nick Clegg
Ed Miliband
David Cameron
Cameron’s speech
MHP tweets
from
conference
Clegg’s speech
Miliband’s speech

5. Top ten political blogs driving conversation
across all three conferences
Our monitoring covered all social media platforms, and whilst Twitter
has clearly increased its influence as the key platform for sharing ideas
and opinions at party conference, the following top ten political blogs
attracted a significant amount of traffic.
Influencer definition
Synthesio is a digital monitoring tool that measures sentiment, chatter and buzz across
millions of sources globally. One of the leading global tools of its kind, Synthesio analyses
content from over 100 countries in over 50 languages.
The Synthesio Influencer score given for sources takes into account different meta data
depending on what media types are being analysed. For mainstream media, blogs and
forums Synthesio incorporate Google and Alexa Page Rank data along with the total number
of on-topic mentions. For forums, where data is public we also include the size of
membership the community has.
Position Blog Synthesio influencer scorecard
1 The Guardian 4,805
2 Spectator 2,317
3 The Telegraph 1,600
4 Mirror 727
5 LabourList 633
6 Daily Express 597
7 BBC News 563
8 Huffington Post 514
9 New Statesman 492
10 ITV 440
MHP tweets
from
conference

6. Share of conversation by policy area
We’ve looked at the data and broken the share of voice down by policy area.
Despite the emphasis on laying out their claim for economic credibility, ‘Health
and Social Care’ was the most talked about topic at the Conservative conference.
A statistic perhaps best explained by the 50,000 strong demonstration on Sunday
and its focus on combating any potential cuts to the NHS:
Conservative
Labour
Liberal Democrats
Health and Social Care
Economy
Transport
Energy
Education
Foreign Affairs
Health and Social Care
Economy
Transport
Energy
Education
Foreign Affairs
Health and Social Care
Economy
Transport
Energy
Education
Foreign Affairs
MHP tweets
from
conference

7. www.mhpc.com