In December, the Conservatives spent almost £85,000 on a presidential-style social media advertising campaign through Rishi Sunak’s social media accounts – almost five times what Labor spent in the same period.
As the UK heads into an election year, the party has begun a spending spree in the final weeks of 2023 to get more people to engage with the prime minister’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
On Thursday, Sunak said his “factual assumption is that we will have a general election in the second half of this year”, giving the prime minister more than six months to improve both his personal ratings and his party’s polling.
However, pollsters warn that this “presidential” strategy of campaigning against Sunak rather than the Conservative Party is a “mistake” due to his low popularity and past mistakes that make him look “out of reach”.
Between December 2 and December 31, the Conservatives paid £84,819 for 49 adverts on Sunak’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, but did not publish any adverts from the party’s main accounts on the platforms during the same period.
Twelve of these adverts, launched on December 29, are still available online and directly encourage people to follow Rishi Sunak himself, rather than directing them to the Conservative Party.
Advertisements on social media show several photographs of Mr Sunak visiting and campaigning, with the caption: “I know most of what you see from me is what other people are saying – listen up , what I say and do is straight from me.” “
This advertising spend in the Prime Minister’s account is 18 times the amount spent on advertising by Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer, and five times the amount spent by Labor as a whole in December.
The Labor Party spent £4,714 on 282 advertisements on Sir Keir Starmer’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, four of which were distributed across England and the rest targeted specific regions and postcodes.
The opposition party also spent £10,932 on 725 advertisements on its main accounts, 20 of which were distributed across the UK and the rest targeted specific regions and postcodes.
Sir Keir has 200,000 followers each on his Facebook and Instagram accounts, far fewer than the Prime Minister, who has 816,000 followers on Facebook and 3 million on Instagram.
Mr Sunak’s accounts on two platforms, both owned by Meta, also launched a major campaign between October 4 and 8 targeting individual towns, which each received £20 million in funding as part of the Government’s Long Term Cities Plan.
Of the 55 towns that received funding, Sunak’s ad targeted only 31, including several towns with narrow majorities that the Conservatives won over Labor in 2019.
These included Heywood in the Heywood and Middleton constituency, which Chris Clarkson won with a majority of 663 votes, and Blyth in Blyth Valley, which Ian Levy won with 712 votes.
The campaign ran a total of 84 adverts, each containing a video of Mr Sunak discussing the funding.
Conleth Burns, a senior fellow at More in Common, said the “presidential strategy has never been without risk” and may not work with some voters.
“Sunak’s mistakes, from the contactless card to Prada shoes, filtered through to focus groups and the overwhelming impression among voters we spoke to was that Sunak had missed the issue on the cost of living,” he said. I.
He added that the president’s strategy would “make some sense” if Mr Sunak was more popular than his party, but highlighted that a YouGov poll last month showed net support for both countries at -49.
The Prime Minister’s positive rating is also much lower than Sir Keir’s, which currently stands at -22, according to YouGov.
“Sunak will have to be much closer to Starmer on these favorable ratings to justify his bet on President Rishi’s strategy,” Mr Burns added.
Chris Hopkins, director of research firm Savanta, said that “Conservatives know that their brand is quite toxic”, adding: “On the one hand, it makes sense to talk all about the leader, but on the other hand, I think they are mistaken if they think it’s a good idea to build a campaign around Sunak.”
He added: “I can’t imagine the Conservatives’ ratings rising as a result of their own actions – and certainly not as a result of a social media strategy entirely focused on Sunak.”
Source: I News
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