As Reform UK’s annual conference kicks off in Birmingham this week, a new survey shows the party has attracted disproportionately high media attention compared with other major parties this year.

Data from BeBroadcast and Cast from Clay show that despite only winning five MPs at the last election (now down to four), Nigel Farage’s party was mentioned 353,660 times by broadcast media from 1 January to 1 September this year. This equates to 70,732 mentions per MP. By comparison, the Labour Party has 411 MPs and received 924,693 mentions, translating to only 2,249 mentions per MP. Meanwhile the Tories, with 121 MPs returned — down 251 on 2019’s result — achieved 121,251 mentions, roughly 1,000 per MP.

The data also tracked the number of mentions each party received in proportion to the YouGov voting intention recorded at the end of August. For example, although the survey judged Reform “overexposed” relative to the 14.4% it secured at the last election, its coverage was deemed “proportional” to the 28% it was polling last month.

Reform UK makes up almost a quarter of all broadcast media mentions

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}})}();

Politicians from rival parties have been vocal critics of the amount of attention broadcasters have shown Reform UK. Last June, in the run-up to the general election, then Greens leader Carla Denyer said that “while media outlets are legally required to give us coverage in the [election] campaign, the same is not true the rest of the year”. She added: “And so Right-wing parties like Reform get a huge amount more media coverage than the Greens. I think they have barely any councilors across the entire country whereas we’ve got over 800.”

In July this year, Lib Dem MP Max Wilkinson wrote to Ofcom about what he felt was the undue prominence given to Nigel Farage by the BBC. “The BBC’s weighting of Reform’s reactions to national and international news is disproportionate to the small number of seats they hold in Parliament,” the letter read. Wilkinson claimed that the BBC went to “lengths that we imagine would not be proportionally extended to other parties” to cover Farage’s visit to the Channel.

Reform UK receives a disproportionate amount of media attention in relation to its number of MPs

!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}})}();

When it comes to broadcast attention, data for other parties is again revealing. In contrast to Reform, current voting intention has Labour down at 21% from 33.7% at the 2024 general election, and on that measurement, it is “overexposed” in broadcast mentions. Meanwhile the Tories are polling at 17%, down from 23.7% last year, and the party’s infrequent mentions in the media are proportionate with its lower polling.

Tom Hashemi, CEO of communications consultancy Cast from Clay, said that the Tories’ failure to cut through should worry the party leadership. “Forget Reform for a second,” he said. “The real story here is how invisible Kemi Badenoch has become. Broadcast media simply doesn’t see her as relevant. For the Conservatives, that is a crisis.”

---

Max Mitchell is UnHerd’s Assistant Editor, Newsroom.

MaxJMitchell1

---