The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has unveiled his party’s manifesto in a speech in Manchester.
Looking at the full document, presented on Monday, we can see the key themes and messages the party wants to get across by analysing the words used.
Health
Rather unsurprisingly, health – which Labour is viewed as very strong on – is mentioned the most in the manifesto. Health, the NHS, doctors, nurses and GPs are mentioned 62 times in total in the document. Polls show Labour is the most trusted party when it comes to the NHS and that management of the health service is one of the top concerns for voters (second only to immigration).
The gap between Labour and the Conservatives on voters’ trust on the NHS has been fairly consistent over the past five years, but in recent months the gap has widened in Labour’s favour.
Education
Ipsos Mori’s first political monitor of 2015 put education and schools as the fourth most important issue for voters when they cast their ballot on 7 May. Labour’s manifesto mentions education, schools and universities 52 times. In his speech, Miliband promised to protect education and to “make amends for the mistakes of this government” by cutting tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000.
This might be a vote-winner: a YouGov poll published on Monday showed that the public supports such a reduction in university tuition fees by 59% to 22%.
Inequality
A large part of Labour’s pitch ahead of the election has been based on the economic recovery not trickling its way down to every part of society. Although unemployment is low, wage growth has been sluggish and living standards are only just reaching pre-2010 election levels. One of the keywords we have used here is poverty, with it being acknowledged that the target of eliminating child poverty by 2020 is unlikely to be met.
Labour has committed to a rise towards an £8 minimum wage by October 2019. The party has also pledged to ban zero-hour contracts, place a 50p tax rate on incomes over £150,000, scrap winter fuel payments for the richest pensioners and freeze gas and electricity bills until 2017.
Economy
Labour is working hard to change how voters perceive its capability to manage the economy. It is worth noting here that if you add together the word economy and the keywords we had under “deficit/debt” you get 62 mentions – as many as we recorded for health. The key announcements by Miliband today are:
- Every policy in the manifesto will be paid for without requiring any additional borrowing
- The first budget will promise to cut the deficit every year and this will be verified by the Office for Budget Responsibility
Methodology
Our approach is limited in that we will only see how frequently the words we have chosen as keywords are used. Given the complexity of language, this could mean that some issued have been missed out or overrepresented.
However, by comparing the three main parties across the week we will be able to get a picture of how much importance they have placed on the issues key to the electorate. The list of keywords we have used are as follows.
Health - health/NHS/doctors/nurses/GPs
Education - education/schools/universities
Inequality - inequality/poverty/wage/pay
Spending - spend/spends/spending/investment
Taxes - tax/taxpayers/taxes/VAT
Crime and policing - crime/crimes/police/policing/prisons
Jobs/employment - unemployment/jobs/employment/workers
Economy - economy
Deficit/debt - deficit/debt/borrowing/cuts
Housing - housing/buyers/rent/renters/property/house/housebuilding
Immigration - immigration/immigrants/migration/migrants
