What do “normal people” really think? Vox pops, where journalists thrust a microphone or notepad in front of shoppers, tell us almost nothing.
The polling industry overall has taken a knock since the 2015 general election, the EU referendum and Donald Trump’s win.
Analysis of social media has proven difficult, because it struggles to gauge sentiment and Twitter users are a different self-selecting group to those of, say, Facebook.
Red Box has also teamed up with Impact Social, which uses humans to analyse social media and capture the real reaction of people on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
To put the technology to the test, we asked them to look at the reaction to Theresa May’s big speech on Brexit, in which she said Britain would leave the single market, control immigration and could reject a bad deal in favour of no deal at all.
Advertisement
A total of 38,000 posts from 11am on Tuesday to the same time yesterday were left once journalists, politicos and campaign groups were taken out, and a scientific sample of these were then read by analysts.
Overall 28 per cent were positive, marginally higher than the 27 per cent negative, and the rest judged to be neutral.
More interesting were the sentiments expressed. Among those who were positive, 40 per cent praised the PM for having a solid plan, and 33 per cent liked the bold, hard line on the EU.
“The overwhelming feeling you get from reading the thoughts of those in favour of the speech is a sense of relief,” Impact Social said. “That finally, after a near seven month wait something is happening.”
Praise for the line on controlling immigration was much less significant, featuring in only 4 per cent of posts.
Advertisement
Among those who were negative, almost a quarter (23 per cent) thought the speech was undemocratic, 17 per cent were anti-May, 13 per cent thought it was a deluded gamble and 11 per cent cried betrayal.
“‘Cheated’ is the best word to describe the overall sentiment of the negative posts,” the analysts said.
In part this could be because May backed Remain, but has reinvented herself as a champion of Brexit.
Impact Social say their data showed Donald Trump ahead in Florida, despite what some conventional polls said, and also picked up how concern about immigration was fuelling a vote for Brexit.
They stress this is not about making predictions, but capturing what social media users are actually saying in real time.
Advertisement
By getting real people to read the tweets and posts, they can catch sarcasm and slang which a computer programme cannot.
No single method of measuring public opinion is foolproof, but using social media analysis like this alongside polling and focus groups, it is possible we can build a better picture of the public mood.