{"id":87334,"date":"2016-04-04T13:10:43","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T13:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=87334"},"modified":"2016-11-10T15:51:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T15:51:29","slug":"political-engagement-has-anything-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/political-engagement-has-anything-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Political engagement: has anything changed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Fueled<\/b><strong>\u00a0by the prospect of a hung parliament, the 2015 election saw 66% of Britons turn out to the polls to vote. While this was proudly touted by the press as the \u2018highest turnout since Tony Blair\u2019s 1997 landslide\u2019, dwindling political engagement has long been a concern for parliamentarians around the country. As\u00a0the Hansard Society prepares to launch the 2016 Audit of Political Engagement on April 14th,\u00a0we explore the\u00a0key events that have sparked an interest from the public.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The upcoming EU referendum has given the public a reason to get riled up, and it\u2019s dominated social media like no other political topic. Ask a friend whether they think we should leave or remain and they\u2019ll probably have an opinion: ask them why, and they may not be quite so sure. But whether it\u2019s the drama of the campaign or the politics itself, it\u2019s gripped the public in a way which has been lacking for some time. The graph below shows the high volume of twitter mentions since February, when the referendum was officially announced. \u00a0The only issue is that this will end on June 23<sup>rd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-04-Referendum.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-87372 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-04-Referendum.png\" alt=\"Referendum twitter activity\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the rise of the \u2018Corbynista\u2019 will have a more long term impact. After the Conservative win and Ed Miliband\u2019s resignation, Corbyn\u2019s rapid ascent was fuelled by a monumental rise in Labour party membership. Between May and January 2016, numbers increased by around 137,000. To put this into perspective, nearly as much as the Conservative\u2019s total membership of 150,000. Corbyn\u2019s supporters are clear about what they want, which is something different to run of the mill Westminster politicians. Conservatives will find comfort in the fact that their voters are largely uninterested in being part of a party of activism, and Corbyn would probably\u00a0struggle to be elected as PM- but he\u2019s inspired engagement which most party leaders can only dream of.<\/p>\n<p>The graph below shows the peak number of tweets relating to Corbyn and Cameron in the last month.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Corbyn-Cameron-Tweet-Volume1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-87368 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Corbyn-Cameron-Tweet-Volume1.png\" alt=\"Corbyn Cameron Tweet Volume\" width=\"480\" height=\"323\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dwindling political engagement has long been a concern for parliamentarians around the country. Has the last year changed that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":87362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7271,1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95637,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87334\/revisions\/95637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}