Q&A: How has the General Election campaign unfolded on social media?

Since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the General Election on May 22, social media has been awash with viral and bizarre moments – so how has the campaign played out online?

From Labour’s Cilla Black TikTok to Nigel Farage referencing Eminem, some parties have aimed to showcase their humour online in order to send a message to their voters.

The Conservatives meanwhile have trailed behind in their effectiveness on social media throughout the campaign, with industry analyst Matt Navarra saying the party did not “really understand what people want from them”.

Here is a look back at what has happened on social media since the General Election was called.

– What has been happening on TikTok?

Popular vertical video platform TikTok became a major battleground for the three main political parties throughout their campaigns, and while they launched their accounts just days after the election was called, they took slightly different approaches in their tactics on the site to appeal to voters.

Despite the Tories calling the election, Labour beat them to the platform, launching their TikTok on May 23 – and immediately leant heavily into internet culture.

Using viral memes and popular trends to mock the Conservatives and share their policies, Labour’s page has gained nearly six million likes compared with the Tories’ 807,000.

Labour’s most watched video aimed to land a blow at Rishi Sunak’s national service policy by using a clip of Cilla Black singing Surprise! Surprise! with a caption that read: “POV: Rishi Sunak turning up to your 18th birthday to send you to war”.

The video, posted on May 26, received around five million views and around 730,000 likes.

The most viewed post for the Conservatives, a video of Rishi Sunak explaining his policy on national service and the first video the party shared after launching their page on May 26, has around 280,000 likes and was watched around four million times.

However it was the Liberal Democrats who found the least popularity on TikTok with around 24,000 followers and around 640,000 likes to their page which they launched on May 28.

Formerly known as Twitter, X is more familiar territory for the parties, with the Tories and Labour launching on the platform in 2008, while Lib Dems’ account goes back to 2007.

Again, Labour leads the way on the discussion-based platform with one million followers, compared with about 627,000 for the Conservatives, 340,000 for the Lib Dems, and 360,000 for Reform – and the parties’ tactics of using viral memes and trends has translated onto the platform to allow them to deliver blows at one another and showcase their policies.

Throughout this campaign however, the parties have been subject to Community Notes, a feature rolled out widely on the platform in late 2022, which allows users to add context to potentially misleading content.

In one example, the X account for the Conservatives came under fire from users after it shared a video of Martin Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, saying on ITV that a senior member of the Labour Party told him that an unspecified policy would not be included in the party’s manifesto because they could not commit to it, but it was their aim to “do it over the next Parliament”.

The Conservatives suggested Mr Lewis was speaking about Labour’s tax policies but Mr Lewis commented on the footage, saying “NO WHERE in this comment do I talk about taxes”, and a Community Note was added, stating that the video was “unrelated to the text it is presented alongside”.

– What were the viral moments?

The election campaign has been full of notable social media moments, from online jibes at the Prime Minister for standing in the rain without an umbrella on May 22, to Mr Farage taking to his TikTok account to say “my milkshake brings all the people to the rally” after a McDonald’s milkshake was thrown over him on the trail.

While Mr Sunak announced the election and got caught in a downpour, one X account went viral after it posted a video showing a large set of speakers pressed up against the gates of Downing Street playing Things Can Only Get Better – a hit from the 90s which was the sound of Tony Blair’s 1997 general election soundtrack – which almost drowned out the voice of the Prime Minister.

The video posted by protester Steve Bray on his X account earned two million views and around 31,000 likes.

The Labour Party also had their fair share of social media swipes at the Prime Minister, and one particular X post earned around 32,000 likes for a simple text response to Mr Sunak who wrote on June 10: “If you’re a criminal, the law should show you no mercy.”

Labour quoted the post on the same day and replied: “Says the man fined for breaking the law twice”, which earned more than 1.5 million views.

Elsewhere, Nigel Farage has been at the centre of several social media moments, with the Reform UK leader earning millions of likes for his appearances on TikTok and X.

Announcing his return to politics, Mr Farage took to X to share a video of himself sitting in a car while while rapper Eminem’s hit track Without Me played in the background, specifically with the lyrics “guess who’s back”.

Mr Farage tagged Mr Sunak’s official X account in the post to taunt the Prime Minister, writing “Good morning @RishiSunak”.

Following an incident on the campaign trail where a punter threw a McDonalds milkshake over Mr Farage, he took to TikTok to put a light-hearted spin on the incident.

Holding a McDonald’s milkshake, the Reform UK leader said: “My milkshake brings all the people to the rally,” which earned around 14,000 likes.

– How much have the parties spent on social media?

Throughout the month of June, the political parties have spent money on their Facebook advertisements – the only social media platform where data on ad spending is readily available – with the Conservatives forking out around £696,000 on 2,500 adverts from June 1 to June 30 on their party’s official page.

The Facebook page for Rishi Sunak did not spend any money on advertising throughout the same time period.

In comparison, the Facebook pages for the Labour Party and Sir Keir Starmer spent a combined sum of around £636,000 on around 6,600 adverts throughout the month of June, while the pages for Reform UK and Nigel Farage spent around £427,000 on around 250 adverts.

The Facebook pages for the Liberal Democrats and Sir Ed Davey spent the least amount – around £48,000 on 3,400 adverts.

While the Tories spent the most on getting their word out to their voters on Facebook, the party had the least amount of interactions from users on the platform from June 1 to June 30, compared to other Facebook pages for the parties and their leaders.

Around 475,000 Facebook users interacted with the Tories’ posts over the month of June, in the form of reactions, shares and comments, while around 2.48 million users interacted with the pages for Reform UK and Nigel Farage.

While Reform UK appear to have dominated the platform, the Labour Party also faired well and had more interactions from Facebook users than the Tories – around 627,000 in total from users on the pages for the party and Sir Keir.

– What do the experts think?

Matt Navarra, social media consultant and industry analyst, said while Labour has been effective in their use of social media throughout the campaign by being “more agile” and “better at understanding how to use TikTok more effectively” than the other parties, it appeared as though Conservatives did not “really understand what people want from them”.

“I think Labour has done better than I expected, I hadn’t gone into the election thinking they would be one of the stronger performers in terms of their social content and really understanding how to leverage it in an effective way, but they have done pretty well comparative to the competition,” Mr Navarra, author of industry newsletter Geekout, told the PA news agency.

“Any other party that is putting stuff out that is mocking the Conservatives or is competing with them in terms of policies is always going to land fairly well anyway – they could say many different things and it would do reasonably well because people want to hear those messages because they’re fed up with the Conservative Party in general.”

Mr Navarra also said Reform UK have been “very effective” using a “Trump-esque” style on their social media platforms.

“The Reform party and Nigel Farage are very good at playing the Trump-esque style of social media games and strategy to be much more controversial and outlandish,” he said.

“That strategy has worked well for them and in many ways, although it’s on the surface a simple strategy, it’s also a very effective one for them and it’s worked well for them.”