Labour is worst for negative campaigning in UK General Election 2005

In an analysis of the content of 123 press releases published online by the 3 major parties between 21st March to 1st April 2005, Dr Mike Baxter, a specialist in analysing the online customer experience, has shown that all parties are overwhelmingly negative in their campaigning - 50% more press releases contain something that attacks the opposing parties than contain positive campaigning messages.

"Although negative campaigning can result in greater media coverage, it has been shown quite clearly to depress voter turnout at the polls. With the 2001election having seen an all time low in voter turnout, it is worrying to see all the political parties persisting with such a negative approach", commented Dr Baxter.



About this research:
This research is published at http://www.cx-i.com/online_politics/negative_campaigning/ .
Every press release published on the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat web sites (http://www.conservatives.com; http://Labour.org.uk; http://www.libdems.org.uk ) between 21st March and 1st April 2005 was downloaded and its content analysed. This amounted to a total of 123 press releases; 55 from Labour, 40 from the Liberal Democrats and 28 from the Conservatives. Each press release was categorised as negative campaigning if it contained attacks on the opposing parties or the people representing these parties, either for their past record, current policies or policy proposals. Positive campaigning was taken to include 1. recording the party's own past achievements and identifying their benefits, 2. proposing or reiterating the party's own policies, 3. clarifying how the party's own policies would lead to different courses of action from those proposed by the opposition or 4. claiming outcomes or consequences that would follow from implementation of the party's own policies.

About Dr Mike Baxter:
Mike is the Managing Director of www.saleslogiq.com, a company specialising in analysing and improving the customer experience of e-commerce sites. Having originally trained as a psychologist, he was formerly Professor of Design and Communication at Ravensbourne College in Kent. He is also the author of Online Retail 2004, the first benchmarking study of the customer experience of top UK retail sites.
About www.cx-i.com:
cx-i.com publishes regular articles by Mike Baxter, offering insights into the customer experience in online retail, online financial services and online politics.