Liberal Democrat Manifesto - Snap Analysis

Today was the turn of the Liberal Democrats to launch their General Election manifesto, following on from Labour yesterday.

You can read our snap analysis of the Labour manifesto here, but with the Lib Dems now providing a point of comparison, we can look at the difference between the two parties.

A feature of the Labour document was the lack of mentions of Brexit – just 27 mentions in nearly 24,000 words. While Tim Farron mentions it four times in his opening statement, the overall picture is similar – a total of 23 mentions in almost 22,000 words.

If anything, this is more surprising in the Lib Dems’ document, as their alternative position on the inevitability of Brexit sets them apart from the other main parties and appears to be one of the most news-worthy elements, based on initial coverage.

On the topic of Brexit, the proposal of a second referendum and softer Brexit might appear a shrewd move on the basis that 48% of the UK voted to remain. However, research from YouGov this week suggests that – although most Remainers still think they voted the right way - more than half are now of the opinion that Brexit should go ahead as the government has a ‘duty of care’ to respect the public vote. As a result, 68% of the electorate are now thought to be behind Brexit – leaving the remain-leaning parties with a smaller pool of potential voters.

Away from the issue of Brexit, the word cloud above shows the most repeated terms in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto. Amongst the similarities, there is some contrast to Labour here. The Labour party word cloud highlighted a large number of mentions of public services, workers, business, investment, security and ‘national’. By contrast, the Lib Dems have more mentions of health, schools, care, social, funding, development and ‘local’. While this is a crude measure of priority, the language here is more focused around business and the economy from Labour, and more personal concerns from the Lib Dems.

For a more detailed analysis, we again turned to IBM Watson’s Personality Insights tool to compare the personality traits detected in each party’s language:

The three biggest differences in how Watson interpreted the tone of the two manifestos fall under Openness, Agreeableness and Liberty.

As you’d perhaps expect from the more centrist party ethos, Labour’s lower ‘Openness’ score suggests more use of functional arguments and appeals to logic compared to what Watson defined as the 10% more emotive, passionate language of the Lib Dem manifesto.

Labour do score 11% higher for ‘Agreeableness’. With a mantra of ‘For the Many, Not the Few’ a vocabulary of inclusiveness best serves their message of society and co-operation. From their opening statement, the Lib Dems begin an attack on Theresa May’s Conservative party for calling the General Election, which they perceive as a cynical power-grab. As the further left option, the core Lib Dem mindset is arguably defined, at least in in part, by its difference to the right, rather than the slightly more (traditionally) centralist position of Labour. The Lib Dems more aggressive footing has clearly had an impact on the lexicon of both manifestos.

‘Liberty’ is one of the more abstract measures, but it’s nevertheless interesting that the terminology of the Labour manifesto suggests more wanderlust and thirst for change than the Lib-Dems who, amongst other things, promise a second EU referendum. With headline proposals like nationalising water companies, the far-reaching ideology of the Labour manifesto has clearly trickled down to creating an overall tone that is 10% more experimental and ambitious than even the Lib Dems.

We’ve focused here on the differences between the two manifestos, but there is inevitably much overlap and common ground between the two largest left-leaning parties. It will be interesting to add the Conservative and UKIP proposals to this analysis once they are published in the coming days.

 

MEC Manchester Analytics & Insight