Tag Archives: politicshome.com

That looks to be the view of many people according to the findings of the latest PoliticsHome Impact Tracker.

The tracker asks: “Below is a list of news stories that the media have focused on this week. Looking back over the week, please say which stories, if any, have most interested you. You may choose up to three.”

The overall figures show some interesting trends – the top story getting interest was ID cards (with 31%) just beating the story about two police dogs dying in a hot patrol car (29%). Yes, that’s right – a hard political story beat an animal tragedy story for interest from the public. In addition to those two, the renationalisation of the East Coast rail line also got more interest than the ongoing story of Michael Jackson’s death, a finding that raises some interesting questions about some of the media’s editorial judgements.

But what really caught my eye was the variation in the results when looked at by party affiliation. It’s perhaps no surprise that Conservative and Lib Dem supporters were far more likely to find the ID cards story interesting than Labour supporters. After all, they are both more likely to be opposed to ID cards, and generally opponents think ID cards are a much bigger deal than supporters.

It goes on though. Labour and Lib Dem supporters were much more interested in the railway renationalisation than Conservatives; Conservative and Lib Dems were more interested than Labour in the criticism of Michael Martin being given a peerage; Labour and Lib Dems were more interested than Conservatives in the news that George Osborne’s mortgage expense claims are being investigated and so on.