One in five Britons say they will pay attention to the conferences, with just one in eight saying they look interesting
Party conference season is upon us, with politicians and journalists decamping out of London as each party holds their annual conference in turn. There will be speeches by ministers and their opposition counterparts, debates about the future of the parties, as well as side events where campaign groups and industry bodies try to grab the attention of those deciding party policy. They will also be a major part of the news agenda for the next month, but what do the British public really think about them?
In fact, for many, it’s more a case of ‘do they think about them?’ Only one in five Britons (20%) say they pay at least a fair amount of attention to what is being said at party conferences, including just 2% who give them a lot of thought. Four in ten Britons (42%) report giving them not much attention, while 36% choose to ignore the proceedings entirely.
Perhaps key to the limited levels of interest in the conferences is an overwhelming belief that they don’t come across as at all interesting. Only one in eight Britons (13%) get the impression that they are at least fairly compelling, while three-quarters of the public (76%) say that party conferences simply look uninteresting.
Despite this, the public do tend to think that the media gives the conferences the appropriate amount of attention. Only a quarter of Britons (26%) feel that the events get too much coverage and just 7% of the public believe they are underreported on. For four in ten Britons (41%), the current level of coverage for annual party conferences is about right.
One noteworthy aspect of Britons’ views on party conferences is how unified they are across the political spectrum. In an era when there’s much discussion of deep political divides, voters for the four largest parties can unite in their apathy towards party conferences. Only around a quarter of Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and Reform UK voters (23-31%) are giving them much attention, while between just 14% and 18% of voters for those parties believe they look interesting.
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