Brown, Clegg, Cameron - positive character traits? Semantic analysis demonstrates who is leading

After the first of three Prime Minsterial TV Debates viewers expressed opinions on the BBCs Have Your Say discussion forum. Our sentiment analysis represents over 1500 comments on Gordon Brown and Labour Party, David Cameron and Conservative Party and Nick Clegg and Liberal Democrats.

For this piece of analysis, we looked to see how closely in context the various party leaders were to a number of relevant key words (chosen by us) that were positive in content. The higher the score, the closer in context the particular leader to these words in the discussion forum. This means that a higher score indicates that the party leader is closer in context to these positive words when used in the discussions on the website, and would reflect the public's opinion on this particular leader.

It is noticeable that again Nick Clegg scores the highest, but David Cameron also does well with Gordon Brown lagging behind both of them. This again would reflect the opinion shown in a number of polls after the first leader's debate that showed that the public's opinion of Nick Clegg has risen ahead of the other two party leaders.

This analysis shows how the words used by the public immediately after the debate show the same result, and this analysis for the first time allows a quantitative analysis of the public's opinion based on what they actually say.

We will continue this analysis over the coming days, by analysing online discussions on the three leaders, and therefore show how trends are forming in the days running up to the election.





Election Trends answers ongoing questions of: the publics popularity towards political parties and their leaders, the public perception of the character of the party leaders, and public confidence in the political parties. Election Trends presents ongoing daily election updates on existing topics, with special feature topics.

To discover more detail about the opinion of your target market, or more detail on these particular election topics and words. Please contact Jayne at Election Trends:

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Email - jayne@emiore.co.uk

Election Trends delivers sentiment analysis from digital opinion sources. Election Trends is a brand of Emiore, a digital opinion research and trend analysis consultancy.