Standing for attention: minor parties in the spotlight
Clarity of thought in digital campaigning reveals likely winners and losers
Last week we took a deep-dive into the digital campaigns for the two big parties competing for the right to form a government. It showed pretty clear trends about the state of Labour and the Conservatives’ strategy, funding, and targeting.
Today we’re looking at the varied approaches taken by the minor parties. While the overall story of this election looks likely to be a Labour victory, the extent of their majority is arguably dependent on the fortunes of parties across the UK who are the local challengers to the Conservatives.
The fact that the Tories are fighting on multiple fronts has been a huge challenge for them, especially since Nigel Farage belatedly entered the race for Reform UK to boost their effort. But whether the challenge translates to the implosion some polls predict depends on whether small parties can convince enough undecided or otherwise-inclined voters to lend their tactical weight.
In this post we’ll look at digital campaigns by the Lib Dems, Reform UK, SNP and the Green Party.
Overview of campaign spending to date
An overview of Meta ad spending:
Of the £5.5m spent between 22 May (when the election was called) and 28 June (the latest data available), £905,968 was spent by smaller parties.
The Green Party outspent the Lib Dems in the period before election spending limits came into play (22-30 May). Since then the two parties have spent roughly equal sums on Meta.
For the Greens, Lib Dems and SNP, the main party pages are by far the largest spenders, dwarfing any candidate or party leader.
Reform UK has spent £370,710 despite entering the campaign late and only beginning to ratchet up Meta spending since 16th June. Since 24 June, it has outspent the Conservatives.
A significant majority of Reform’s spending has been through Nigel Farage’s page - £255,707 to 28 June, with just £91,382 through the party’s main page.
Lib Dems: harmonised focus on campaigners and tactical voting
The Lib Dems have bought Meta ads across 192 pages. That’s almost 4 times the number of active pages used by Reform, Greens and the SNP - giving a sense of the greater ambition Ed Davey’s party has, and its greater number of second-places in 2019.
This difference can also be seen in the content of Lib Dem ads, which are firmly focused on two priorities: galvanising younger activists to participate in the campaign effort, and building a longer-term sense of momentum behind the party. Ads therefore tend to look like this:
As you’d expect, this also translates to a low number of ads designed for a national or general audience. Postcode-based targeting is the norm for the Lib Dems. Over the past 7 days for which Meta data is available (24-30 June), just 4% was targeted at the UK as a whole.
When we feed the party’s latest location data (24 June - 1 July) onto the Who Targets Me spending map, the picture becomes even clearer. There is next to no funding going into constituencies where the Lib Dems stand no chance of competing, and the M3/A303 corridor down to the south west is palpably the main focus:
Finally, the Lib Dems have been using digital ad spend as a fundraising tool throughout the election. Today, with just a few days to go, they are emphasising the potential impact of the Daily Mail’s ‘tactical voting advice’. This is of course advice designed to ensure that readers can avoid a ‘Starmer supermajority’:
While it’s questionable whether a paper with a circulation around 735,000 can sway the right voters in the right seats, the Lib Dems are seeing it as an opportunity to appeal to members and activists specifically around online ads:
The Green Party - pockets of winnable potential
The Green Party always has difficult choices to make at a general election. Its resources are dwarfed even by the Lib Dems, and it traditionally struggles to make inroads given many of its candidates are facing Labour opposition.
However, there is a palpable sense of excitement from the Green campaign in this election. This excitement comes from the possibility of retaining Brighton Pavilion, adding Bristol Central - where Labour voices are pessimistic about Thangam Debbonaire’s chances - and potentially even challenging in at least 2 Conservative seats.
It is no surprise given these vital battlegrounds that the map of Green Party spending is highly focused, like this:
Those dark patches of spending reflect the party’s hopes in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, as well as Brighton Pavilion and Bristol Central.
There are a couple of interesting editorial choices about the Greens’ ads.
Firstly, they’ve moved away from direct attacks on Labour. Instead, they are now focused on using the prospect of a ‘supermajority’ to emphasise the safety of voting Green. Like this:
Secondly, the Greens are the only party whose Meta ads are typically seen by more women than men. This is despite none of their audiences being deliberately targeted in this way.
Thirdly, their ads at the moment don’t tend to mention specific seats. There’s clearly an effort to normalise the Green Party’s role in the make-up of Parliament generally. It remains to be seen whether co-opting the Conservatives’ argument on accountability in a ‘supermajority’ will serve the Greens well.
Reform UK - only making fans for Nigel
Looking at spending over time, you get a very clear sense of how the ‘Reform surge’ has been matched by a rapidly expanding digital ad footprint:
While the party’s glitzy event in Birmingham this weekend received breathless write-ups from certain of the nation’s tabloids and even some of its more moderate political editors, the amount of cash splashed on filling the room was enormous.
In fact, as we pointed out, the spend on Facebook ads promoting the event (which around 4,500 people attended) was greater than the revenues generated by ticket sales.
But ads bought after the event suggest that the party (or Farage) is well pleased with how the event turned out. Current live ads show lengthy videos with Richard Tice and Anne Widdecombe speaking. That said, it’s unclear whether even the most fervent Reform supporter would watch a 14 minute video, or what they are intended to encourage them to do.
The event and its ad spend is a microcosm of the wider digital campaign. The whole logic of that is to boost the reputation of one man, and one man only: Nigel Farage. As we pointed out above, for every £1 spent on Reform’s main Meta ad page, almost £3 has been spent on Farage’s profile.
Unusually for a minor party, Reform has also spent a significant amount of cash on a small number of Google search ads - over £50k since 19 June. You’re considerably more likely to have seen a Reform ad than a Conservative one over the last week:
Reform is likely to continue spending big in the final few days of the election. It’s been one of the more successful smaller parties in terms of fundraising during the campaign.
SNP - policy-heavy, light on reach
The SNP is another party that’s been… embattled in this election. With the memory of Nicola Sturgeon and her husband being arrested, and with the coffers almost entirely empty, it’s no surprise that the SNP has been outspent many times over even by other smaller competitors.
The saving grace, of course, is that unlike the Lib Dems or Greens, the SNP is only fighting in one part of the UK. While the party has only spent £43,697 on Meta ads since the election was called, it’s likely that this compares reasonably well to those parties’ spend in Scotland alone.
But our map suggests - in line with the vast majority of polling - that the SNP faces considerable losses. Look at how other parties were on the front foot immediately after 22nd May, and how that developed mid-campaign (7-14 June):
Without the anchoring effect of two key elements - a highly recognisable, experienced leader capable of generating sympathetic media in Westminster, and the golden promise of a serious prospect of independence - the SNP faces fights on many fronts.
When we look at the ads they’ve put out, it’s unsurprising then that they’ve pushed a message that places them firmly to the left of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer:
As we saw in the TV debates, these lines often receive sympathetic hearings from left-leaning voters, including in the rest of the UK. The question is whether, in key Scottish seats, that will be enough to overcome the recent scandals engulfing the SNP in Holyrood.
What conclusions can we draw?
There’s a clear divide in digital strategies in this election - and it applies across the board.
Our analysis of the strategies employed here shows that some parties have real clarity of thought on what their digital spend is for. We could include among those:
Labour, whose well-financed blanket campaign projects confidence and consistency
The Lib Dems, whose targeted, repetitive, candidate-focused ads are designed to work in harmony with their real-world pavement politics
The Greens, who have also maximised the resources going into winnable seats and are capitalising on their growing base in local government
Reform UK, who believe in presidential politics and have spent accordingly
Except in the latter case, where a couple of polls have changed the messaging significantly, each of these parties has stuck to its initial narrative.
The Tories and SNP by contrast have run digital campaigns that reflect their inner turmoil. While we still expect the Conservatives to go for a blanketing of ads in the final 48 hours, the SNP’s limited resources have forced it away from serious targeting and promoting local candidates, instead favouring a broad national message.
The final verdict will be delivered later this week, but reading the runes of the online campaign makes it clear who the winners and losers are likely to be.