GWI Audience: Voters in the UK – Q2 2015

Today sees the launch of our new Audience Report profiling Voters in the UK.

Drawing on our recent Q1 2015 wave of UK research among over 8,000 online adults, this report explores key attitudes and digital behaviours among Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, UKIP, Green, SNP and Undecided voters – asking which groups are the most active on social media, which devices are being used to get online and which attitudes and interests are the most pronounced in each party.

Some of its key headlines include:

• Facebook is the top social network among the UK’s voters. Some 75%+ of Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, UKIP and Green voters under the age of 65 are members, while between 40-55% are active users. Twitter is in second-position; for most parties, 40%-50% of their voters have an account on the site and about a quarter are actively using it. However, YouTube is top dog when it comes to visitation – over two thirds in all voter groups say they visited the video site last month.

• Social networking figures for the Undecided group (those yet to make up their mind how to vote) are pretty revealing; 7 in 10 of these floating voters visit YouTube each month and 80% have a Facebook account (with 1 in 2 being active Facebook users). What’s more, undecided voters spend an average of 1.27 hours on social media per day, with 30% saying they use such sites to fill up spare time.

• Conservative voters are some of the least likely to talk about politics online, to share their opinions or “follow” politicians on social media. But they lead the field when it comes to smartphone (78%) and tablet (59%) ownership, are the only group where reading new stories is the top second-screen activity and are some of the most likely to think of themselves as more affluent than average.

• Labour voters watch more TV than anyone else (3.05 hours on linear television per day, as well as 0.91 hours on online shows) and show a consistently stronger-than-average interest in celebrities. Voters for this party are the most likely of all to say they use the internet in order to share their opinions (69% do), but are also the most likely to be swayed by the views of others (where they over-index by 37%).

To see profiles for all other voter groups and to see whether labels such as “The Conversational Election” or “The Social Election” are true, download the report here.