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Capturing the Zeitgeist: Image Beats Policy in (Most) British Elections
01/04/2026
As the UK prepares for what are likely to be the most significant local elections for many years, with ramifications far beyond the local authorities being elected, the UK’s various political parties – established and new – are preparing their campaigns. Professor Paul Baines, Professor of Political Marketing in the University of Leicester School of Business, offers fascinating insights into how parties market themselves in a changing political/media landscape.
“Fifteen years ago when I first wrote books on this with colleagues at what was then Ipsos MORI, we asked the question: what influences how people vote? And the answer was: TV debates, largely. And the interesting thing was that more people were claiming the TV debates were influencing them than actually watched the debates. I’ve seen similar sorts of results in Spain and France.
“I think what people were doing was actually saying whether or not they believed the reportage of the debates, because there’s discussion in the newspapers every time there is a debate. In time, will those debates translate onto YouTube, or another social networking site? I think they will, and to some extent already have, but it depends on how legitimate those social networking sites are seen as being.”
When Professor Baines was researching this topic in the mid-noughties, less than 1% of people said the internet had an influence on how they voted. A lot has changed since then…
“Now that would probably be much higher, but is the internet really changing the way people think? There’s a lot of other factors that impact on how people are influenced in elections, such as who their family vote for, what job they’re in, what social strata they’re in and a whole host of other things. So, the actual impact of communication is often more limited than we might think and often limited to those people who haven’t really made up their minds, the floating voters or switchers.
“What really matters is that sometimes parties can capture the zeitgeist and really encapsulate the need for change. Sometimes they encapsulate how brilliant their vision is for a new future, sometimes they encapsulate how awful the opposition is. There’s all sorts of ways in which parties can seek to influence, to get into power. Social media, and the nature of social media, is transforming political communication, but it’s not just that on its own, it’s that linked to traditional forms of communication too.”
Tradition has a strong hold on British politics but the political landscape has changed enormously in recent years. Professor Baines says it is important that parties understand how to communicate to a new generation of voters.
“Political parties in the UK have tended to be rather traditional, even old-fashioned. They really do need to have an offer for young people that’s not diametrically opposed to older people because they need to retain their older voters but gain new younger voters too. And of course younger voters are not hanging around watching the TV news anymore, they’re watching TikTok, reading Threads, and stuff like that. So is the Conservative Party all over TikTok? I don’t think so. Is the Labour Party particularly good at social networking? I don’t think so either, although both have made some efforts.
“Perhaps Reform is doing the best here at the moment in the sense that it’s managing to significantly increase its membership, as has the Green Party. The Green Party has increased its membership phenomenally over the last few months, really. So I think they’re clearly using social networking sites to maximum effect at the moment.”
Irrespective of the channel or method used, political campaigns sometimes focus more on personalities than policies. This is nothing new, as Professor Baines explains.
“The late Sir Robert Worcester always used to say that voters voted broadly for party image, leader image and policies. He called it the political triangle. Different voter proportions, in terms of how important they see each element, in any particular campaign, but broadly, it’s 33%, 33%, 33% as a kind of base. In any one election, that might shift. For example, in 1997, when Tony Blair was campaigning, clearly a lot of the focus was on him, this youthful guy who was going to change things. So, leader image became particularly important. Did he put forward a lot of policies? No, in fact, he said he’d keep Conservative economic policy. He didn’t really put across a vast amount of new policy. Did he put across the Labour image? Yes. It was New Labour, it was rebranded. So in that election he focused on leader image and party image, not on policy really.
“Compare that with Boris Johnson in 2019; how did he campaign? He did focus on policies. He talked about levelling up. That was a clever policy actually, deliberately designed to win red wall voters. He also wanted to rejuvenate the country economically. And of course, Brexit was a big part of his campaign. So he did have a strong focus on populist policies. Did he have a strong party focus? No. He de-emphasised the party and emphasised his own leadership. And that was really successful. So, you can see then that the political triangle shifts again.”
Like any sensible political expert, Professor Baines is wary about predicting election results, but there is one thing of which he is sure, based on his many years of studying political campaigns.
“Moving forward into new and upcoming elections, the local elections in 2026 and 2027, the next general election in 2029, what might political marketing and campaigning look like for each party? It will be a different constellation of those three things: party image, leader image and policies. And the party that wins will be the one that aligns those best with the zeitgeist of the times.”