To what extent has the support of the Sun newspaper been crutial to success in British general elections since 1992?

Linton further backed up his argument by comparing Rupert Murdoch to the Berlusconi brothers in Italy, including Silvio Berlusconi the current Prime Minister. According to a study, viewers of the Berlusconi TV channels swung 3.5 percent further to the right in the 1994 Italian election than viewers of other channels. The result was to give the right an extra 62 seats in Italy’s Parliament. Linton argued that a similar calculation in this country would show that if readers of the Sun had switched to the Mirror in the last three months before the 1992 election, the Conservatives would have won 23 fewer seats, leaving them with 313 and Labour and the Liberal Democrats with a combined total of 314.

Linton admitted that this calculation makes some unrealistic assumptions, but he said:

“It makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that our democracy is at the mercy of press proprietors. Tabloid newspapers do influence their readers and they did determine the outcome of the 1992 election. It was the Sun wot won it.” 

Jo Haines, of the Mirror, agreed with this statement. Writing in 1992, she said:

“If Kinnock had been able to persuade four newspaper proprietors who don’t even have a vote to support him, he would have been in Number 10 today.”

The effect of the press is at its best among uncommitted electors, of whom there were an exceptional number in 1992. The Sun was therefore perhaps more effective in getting marginal Conservative voters to the polling stations (who might otherwise have abstained) than in converting potential Labour voters into actual Tory voters.

However, while Kinnock felt the Conservative press had been undeniably harsh towards him, he had faced the same pro-Tory bias in 1987, as had Labour leader Michael Foot in 1983. Yet there was no comparable late swing against Labour in those elections.

There is also evidence that the Sun is not all-powerful and actually follows the political agenda rather than sets it. The paper backed the losers of the general election in 1970 and stayed neutral in both 1974 elections while Labour won. The Sun also backed the poll tax until popular opinion forced it to change is line, and then backed Thatcher when she lost the Tory leadership election in 1990.

The effect of the Sun upon the 1992 election must also take into account the long-term impact. Despite the late swing, it seems unlikely that so many voters could be persuaded to vote Tory in just a few days. According to Harrop and Scammell, there was a swing of nine percent to the Conservatives among Sun readers over the one-year period before the general election. They conclude:

“If it was the Sun wot won it, it surely needed more than a week in which to do the job.”

In addition, the late swing, which Linton uses as his most robust argument, was not just confined to the Conservative press. Although the swing amongst Mirror readers in the final week was substantially smaller than among Sun readers, it matched the national average – thus indicating the swing was perhaps more a national phenomenon rather than a press-induced reaction. Chris Nineham believes that the Sun is nothing more than a public mouthpiece:

“Far from moulding public opinion, the tabloids have had to make all sorts of twists and turns to keep up with it.”

Research into media effects is notoriously difficult. Different research methods can produce radically different results - for example, while Linton claims the majority of Sun readers voted Tory in 1992, the authors Heath, Jowell, Curtice and Taylor put the figure at 38 percent. Faced with this level of variable result there is no way the research can claim to be much more than speculative.

Contradictory to Linton, Heath et al concluded that, compared with 1987, Labour’s support rose by the same amount among readers of pro-Conservative tabloids such as the Sun as it did among readers of non-partisan papers. The authors therefore judged that the Sun had little impact upon the Tory victory in 1992: “the pro-Conservative tabloid press was politically ineffective.” For instance, only two in three of those who reported reading a pro-Tory tabloid in 1987 were reading one in 1992, while over half of Daily Mirror readers in 1987 were still doing so in 1994. Judith Orr therefore concluded:

“The Daily Mirror proved to be twice as effective in influencing its readers’ vote as the Tory tabloids and so, even though its readership is half that of comparable Tory papers, the net result was about even.”

Nevertheless, many of the changes made by the Labour Party after the 1992 election were specifically designed to give the Sun less ammunition. Shortly before the 1997 election, Labour persuaded the paper not only to spike its guns, but also to turn them on its Tory rivals. The decision to support Blair was remarkable given the way the newspaper had mercilessly attacked Kinnock only five years previously.

On March 18, 1997, the Sun published a front-page article headlined “The Sun Backs Blair,” although the switch had been apparent for many months. The Labour leader was the “breath of fresh air” that Britain needed, the editorial said. However, the Conservatives played down the importance of the paper’s endorsement and John Major went on breakfast TV to say that it didn’t matter:

“I don’t think that up and down the country, in the Dog and Duck, or at Number 10 Acacia Avenue, they are going to say ‘Gosh, the Sun’s backing Labour, and, therefore, I must change my mind.”

Overall, during the 1997 campaign more than twice as many people were reading a newspaper that backed Labour as were reading one that supported the Conservatives. For those commentators, such as Linton, who believed that the Tories traditional advantage in terms of press partisanship provided them with an unfair advantage at election time, the outcome of the 1997 election appears to be a clear vindication of their claims.

The press realignment helped to reinforce the dynamic image of Blair and his party at the expense of their opponents. This advantage was augmented by the agenda-setting function of the media, which focused on the very issues – European integration, and sleaze, which ultimately did so much to expose Conservative divisions.

The national average swing from Conservative to Labour was 10.5% at this general election. According to MORI, the partisanship of regular Sun readers had changed from 36 percent supporting Labour in 1992 to 52 percent by 1997. The swing from Tory to Labour amongst these readers was 15.5 percent, well above the national average, thus suggesting the Sun had influenced the election result once again. Indeed, the day after the election, the paper played on its 1992 claim with a new headline: “It’s the Sun wot swung it.” Dominic Wring agreed with this sentiment:

“The disproportionately high swings amongst readers of four tabloids which vilified Labour during the 1987 and 1992 elections could indicate these titles’ more neutral/positive (Sun and Star), or less single-mindedly negative (Mail and Express) coverage of the party influenced a significant minority of readers to switch allegiance or abstain this time.”

Paul Whiteley, a political scientist, calculated that the Sun’s effect in 1997 of supporting Blair was to reduce the size of the Conservative vote by Sun readers by 16 percent, instead of the eight percent it would have dropped if the paper had continued to support the Tories. Either way, Labour would have won the election. However, if newspapers can influence votes, then the one occasion on which we should be able to see their influence is when a paper changes sides.

John Curtice conducted a study into this theory. He discovered that support for Labour in 1997 was highest amongst readers of the Sun and those reading one of the other ex-Tory newspapers. Using data from the British Election Campaign Study, he calculated Labour support at 40 percent amongst Sun readers, 38 percent amongst other formerly Conservative papers, and 20 percent amongst papers still faithful to the Tories.

Curtice found that during the final weeks of the campaign, Labour support amongst Sun readers increased by two percent, in line with the Tory support base. However, in the one-year period prior to the election, the Conservatives had lost six percent of Sun readers, while Labour had gained one percent. The Sun does therefore appear to have made a difference to voting preferences over the longer term. Curtice concluded:

“Once we take into account the prior partisanship of their readers, the pattern of vote switching amongst those reading one of the papers that defected from the Conservative cause in 1997 appears to be not dissimilar to that amongst those reading a paper that traditionally supported Labour. Having the Sun on side was as beneficial to Labour as keeping the Mirror on side.”

However, Curtice also discovered that Labour’s share of the vote did not rise during the actual election campaign. In fact, it dropped. Support for Labour fell by four points between the first fortnight in April and polling day, just when the Sun’s attack on Major was at its strongest. Labour’s share of the vote averaged 52 percent in the first five opinion polls published at the beginning of the campaign, but only 47 percent in the last five polls to be conducted before polling day. Labour’s ability to retain its share of the vote during the Sun backed 1997 campaign was little better than its ability to do so during its 1983 campaign during which there was a seven point drop in opinion poll support. The party whose support did rise during the 1997 campaign was the Liberal Democrats – the one party to which no newspaper lent its backing except as a possible tactical vote.

It may well have therefore been the case that readers of the Sun were already more inclined to back Labour before the campaign got under way. Perhaps the Sun’s change of allegiance was a response to a change of mood that had already occurred amongst its readers, and was designed not in the hope of persuading readers to change their vote but because of a fear that otherwise they might stop reading the newspaper. The Sun’s readers were also more likely to abstain, suggesting that politics was not particularly central to their lives anyway. Polling evidence suggests their main characteristic, compared with Mirror readers, is that they are less interested in politics and less committed to one party.

Chris Searle came to a similar conclusion in his work “Your Daily Dose” in 1989. Any association between newspaper read and vote choice could reflect the outcome of one or other or both of two very different social processes, he said. One possibility is that newspapers influence the way that people vote. The other more likely scenario is that people choose to read a newspaper that chimes with their own views. Butler and Stokes commented that: “Newspapers profit from, rather than shape their readers’ party ties.” Therefore, as a readership is also not static, it is possible that the high levels of Labour support amongst Sun readers, and the swing from the Tories, was in fact data formed by new readers who preferred the new political stance of the paper.

Curtice therefore decided that the Sun’s support for Labour did not prove to be a particularly effective recruiting sergeant for Blair. The pattern of vote switching during the campaign amongst readers of the Sun was much like that of those who did not read a newspaper at all. The defection of the paper from the Conservative camp thus failed to make any apparent positive contribution to Labour’s attempts to garner the vote, not least because of the relatively high level of abstention amongst Sun readers. However, it is also possible that the paper’s tactics served to remove what would otherwise have been a source of reinforcement for the Conservative position. The author concluded:

”The Sun’s defection at the beginning of the campaign may have been of symbolic significance, but whether it won Labour many votes during the campaign seems open to doubt.”

Nevertheless, after his landslide victory Blair wrote to thank the paper’s editor, adding: “You really did make a difference.” The Sun persisted with Blair at the 2001 election, although its coverage lacked the gusto of previous years. The paper published its own “manifesto” demanding tax cuts, tough policies on crime and asylum and rejection of the European single currency. Tory leader William Hague suffered at the hands of the paper, but not to the extent that Kinnock did in 1992, or Major in 1997. The Sun was as unmissable during the campaign as always, but offered little of the brilliant populism that had become its trademark and its value lay more in its insider knowledge. Harrop and Scammell commented:

“If in the past, the Sun had boasted of its ability to move votes, this time it flaunted its inside track with the government and its capacity to lead the press.” 

The Sun’s ability to influence election results was picked up by the Wall Street Journal two days before the 2001 poll. The Sun proudly quoted the paper’s reference to political editor Trevor Kavanagh as the most powerful political journalist in Britain. All the press had been following the Sun’s lead with thousands more words, the paper’s editorial claimed.

The Sun was probably right to play on its insider knowledge at this election, as no newspaper could have realistically altered the outcome of Labour’s second landslide. Thus it was the most subdued press coverage of an election for many years, only truly involved when Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott punched a protester, and the press exulted neither at the result nor its part in the outcome. With readership in decline and apathy on the increase, it no longer seemed to matter so much what the tabloids wrote. Their circulations, with the exception of the Daily Mail, were also falling – the Sun by eight percent to 3,288,000 in May 2001. Harrop and Scammell commented:

“Ironically, Labour’s triumph in the press occurred at a time when the direct value of the prize had fallen.”

A clear answer to the question of the Sun’s influence will only emerge after a close election in which the government faces a revived opposition. Then it will be possible to see which papers have been flying a flag of convenience throughout Blair’s premiership. Tory leader Michael Howard recently addressed the editors and executives of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, something Blair did in 1995. The meeting came after Murdoch hinted the Sun might back Howard at the next election. Even if was not the Sun wot won it in previous elections, it is understandable that a party leader would rather have the paper on its side. The Sun has immense negative power. The paper cannot get people elected and it did not win any election outright, but it can and has done immense damage by running sustained and brilliantly entertaining knocking campaigns designed to destroy political reputations. If the press matters at all at election time, the Sun matters most.

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