Rishi Sunak’s D-Day blunder and the death of TV doctor Michael Mosley dominated this week
Earlier this week, we were delighted to launch our new AI-powered news tracker, which asks the public to tell us which news story they have heard about most in the last seven days. Respondents answer in their own words, which our AI language model categorises, allowing us to capture which specific stories have cut through the most with the public.
With further sets of results now released, we take a look back over what stories made the most impact over the last week.
Politically, the biggest story of the last week for the public was Rishi Sunak’s ill-advised decision to leave D-Day commemorations early in order to film an election interview. In our poll on 7-8 June this was the biggest story for 11% of Britons – by the time of our next poll on 10-11 June this figure had increased to 26%. This figure remained consistent for the next couple of days, before finally dropping to 16% in our most recent poll on 13-14 July (although this still ranks second overall, behind only general news about the election, which 19% say is the story they’ve heard most about this week).
Were it not for the disappearance and death of Dr Michael Mosley, the D-Day blunder figure might have peaked at a much higher level. On 10-11 June the loss of the celebrity doctor was the story that the largest number of Britons singled out as the one they had heard most about, at 30%, subsequently tying with the D-Day story the next day at 24% and still being cited by 20% the day after. As of our most recent poll, 11% are still saying it is the story they have heard the most about this last week, the third highest number.
In terms of emerging stories, Rishi Sunak will be frustrated to hear that another negative news story about him has gained some traction – in our most recent poll, 9% of Britons say the story that they heard most about this last week was about how he had to “do without” Sky TV as a child.
Separately, following a week of manifesto launches, 7% of Britons say that coverage of the parties’ pledges is the news they have heard most about this week.
You can read more about how our AI model works in our launch article. YouGov are continuing to offer innovations and new products in the AI space - reach out to us if you think our AI tracker could be of use to you in your future projects.
See the full results for each survey below
