Boris Johnson is failing to sway the EU vote, with online support for the ‘stay in’ campaign actually growing since the London Mayor emerged as out leader, according to trading.co.uk.
The high-tech data platform has tracked around one million online conversations this year on Brexit and can reveal that positive sentiment towards staying in the EU has actually risen since Boris’ shock announcement on February 21. Prior to this date, 52 per cent of the chatter around Britain staying in the EU was positive. Despite Boris’ perceived popularity and influence, this figure has risen to 53 per cent since he decided to lead the out campaign.
Trading.co.uk is capable of tracking more than 22 billion data messages a day from more than 1.6 million web sources, including blogs, news streams and social platforms such as Twitter, and has been tracking the EU debate since mid-2015. The platform shows that while Boris may be failing to sway the vote in his favour, he has undoubtedly raised the profile of the debate, with the number of Brexit conversations increasing five-fold from 8,000 per day to an average of 40,000 in the last fortnight.
The volume and sentiment of conversation on social media has become a key indicator of public feeling and trading.co.uk can show that it was far more accurate than the polls in predicting the last UK General Election. Leading up the Election, social media conversation showed that the Tories were head and shoulders above the Labour party, generating far more online chatter in the weeks before the vote. If the same principle is applied to the Brexit battle, the UK looks set to stay in the EU, albeit more narrowly than most would expect.
Gareth Mann, CEO of Trading.co.uk said: “Analysing social media channels has become an extremely accurate and efficient way of measuring public sentiment and will soon replace polls as the most reliable way of predicting political outcomes. “People are far more likely to voice honest opinions on social media over an extended time period and these opinions can be steadily monitored, removing the desirability bias associated with polls. This term refers to the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably by others – and is where the pollsters fell down during the UK elections.
“Unlike polls, big data can account for a million opinions over several months, and according to current online chatter, voters are leaning towards staying in the EU.” Overall, social media conversation around Brexit peaked on February 21 when around 70,000 people in the UK were discussing the subject online. Since then, the total volume of chatter has dropped by around 40 per cent.
