Conservative Party Manifesto - Snap Analysis

Now that Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems have released their manifestos we can compare common themes and IBM Watson’s take on the similarities and differences between all three party ‘personalities’.

Looking at the almost 30,000-word document, we can see the distinct lack of the nation’s favourite portmanteau in the above word cloud, Brexit. The word appears just 15 times, less than half as many as in either of the Labour or Lib Dem manifestos. Other key themes are as expected with a focus on Britain, businesses and work.

Across the board the formal tone necessary for writing a political document led to some expected similarities – analysing the vocabulary and grammar of the body of text of each manifesto, all three scored ‘Emotional Ranges’ between 88% and 90%.

Regarding ‘Openness’ however, the gap has widened even since yesterday’s Lib Dem vs. Labour comparison, with the Conservatives score of 79% suggesting theirs to be the most intellectually curious and emotionally aware release yet.

But, in all other categories, the Conservative manifesto failed to set any new high watermarks. In fact, when marked on ‘Structure’, ‘Curiosity’, ‘Liberty’ and ‘Helping Others’, the document has consistently entered at a secure third place.

Watson defines (and diagnoses) ‘Liberty’ as “A need to escape and a desire to try new experiences, new things”. Perhaps as we’d assume for a generally ‘preservationist’ party looking to retain power, this was the category that saw the second greatest distance between Labour and Conservative results. Looking at the motivations of this election, you could argue that with Labour wanting to usurp the ruling party and the Conservatives promising the survival of the traditional British identity through a potential Hard-Brexit, these differing perspectives on the great unknown make sense; the opposition party is focussed on what they want to change, and while the other is promising changes too, they dedicate more time to assuring the public of what will also stay the same.

The largest gap between the Conservative manifesto and those of the other parties was for ‘Stability’, no doubt much to the chagrin of Theresa May. Watson defines this as ‘A need for the sensible, tried and tested, with a good track record and a known history’. While the Conservatives would hope to communicate this in their manifesto, the 31 mentions of ‘challenges’ in their document perhaps suggests something different.

Using Google Trends, the peak in searches for ‘conservative manifesto’ seen this morning exceeds that for ‘labour manifesto’ on Tuesday morning with additional searches for ‘tory manifesto’ adding to an even higher search volume.

This may be due to the high level of intrigue surrounding what was contained within the Conservative manifesto compared to the relatively well known Labour manifesto which was leaked 5 days before release.

Searches for ‘lib dem manifesto’ have been consistently low with just a small peak on Wednesday evening when it was released.

We’ll continue to monitor how the internet reacts to these and other manifestos as they are released and keep you updated over the coming weeks.

MEC Manchester A&I