It's only words/and words are all I have

"So what happens when we compare the Conservative and Labour manifestos?"

Manifestos not only inform us about the sorts of issues which parties consider important at the election, they also provide crucial insights into how the parties think about these issues.
You can get some sense of an answer to these questions can be gained from reading the manifestos carefully, a more systematic approach is to analyse the text of the manifestos in order to determine the types of words that they use to describe their positions – as explained here.

So what happens when we compare the Conservative and Labour manifestos? Some differences between the manifestos are immediately apparent. The most obvious difference is that Conservatives are more likely to use words that relate to chaos (such as ‘disorder’, ‘ruin’, ‘wild’, etc.) than Labour (112% more uses). The Conservatives are also more likely to use words relating to ‘restraint’ (‘control’, ‘discipline’, ‘halt’, etc.) than Labour (32% more uses). This may not be surprising given the Conservative’s ‘broken Britain’ claims. What may be more surprising is that Labour are more likely than the Conservatives to use words relating to ‘moral imperatives’ – such as ‘duty’, ‘law’, ‘principles’ (22% more uses).

Labour are also more likely to use words relating to ‘growth’ and ‘height’ (60% more uses). A plausible interpretation of this suggests that this is a result of Labour attempting to play up its record on producing economic growth. Strengthening the case for this interpretation is Labour’s greater usage of words relating to ‘time’ (‘past’, ‘decade’, ‘time’, etc.) (40% more uses). Contrasting with this is the Conservative focus upon words relating to rank orders (‘consistent’, ‘original’, ‘rank’, etc.) (25% more uses) – almost certainly relating to a pessimistic view of Britain in a comparative setting.

Finally, and importantly, the Conservatives are more likely to use words relating to ‘abstract thought’ (‘belief’, ‘choice’, ‘plan’, etc.) than Labour (25% more uses). This suggests a Conservative manifesto built more upon an ideologically driven vision of the future and a Labour manifesto built more upon past facts.

All of the above differences are statistically significant at the 95% level, and comparisons in word usage have been standardised for the different length of manifestos. Unstandardised, the Conservative manifesto is 28768 words in length. The Labour manifesto is 30517 words.

And before any Lib Dems complain, analysis of their manifesto will follow.

Jonathan Rose

Forget debates...THIS is how to engage people

"Filipino voters expect to be ‘charmed and entertained’ by their candidates. Surely UK elections would be less tedious if we demanded the same? Gordon Brown, take note..."

In the Guardian recently Hadley Freeman wrote that UK elections are so boring that they might lead people to ‘self-lobotomise with a spoon’. Her comparison was with US - long and tempestuous, and UK - short and boring - elections.



The Philippines, which is due to hold presidential elections on 10 May 2010, just days after UK voters cast their ballots, gives us another, and perhaps more interesting, point of comparison.


The opening of the presidential race on 9 February 2010 was heralded by The Philippines Daily Enquirer as being like the beginning of a carnival.

And our Gordon might want to take note of the tactics of their Gordon: Richard (Dick) Gordon, a candidate for the Philippines presidential race.

Gordon, a former Senator, is not likely to win the race but he is having a lot of fun trying. Gordon and his running mate Bayani Fernando campaign as 'political transformers’ and have a transformers-branded truck as a campaign vehicle.

Gordon’s campaign was also boosted by his performance with the comedy duo Moymoy Palaboy in which they lip sync their way through the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.



The video for this performance went viral and had received over 50,000 hits within just three days of being loaded up to Youtube.

Gordon, who has admitted that he has little money for advertising his presidential bid, must be delighted with the free publicity. Filipino voters expect to be ‘charmed and entertained’ by their candidates. Surely UK elections would be less tedious if we demanded the same? Gordon Brown, take note.

Dr Pauline Eadie