Political discourse in the United Kingdom is more civil than in the United States, according to two informal polls.

For five days from July 31 to Aug. 4, students in a St. Bonaventure University Media and Democracy course logged and coded posts from leaders of four of Great Britain’s major political parties – Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer, Scottish National Party Leader Stephen Flynn and Liberal Democrats Leader Ed Davey.

The survey, conducted while the platform was transforming to X and changing tweets to posts, showed that an overwhelming majority of the posts were positive. Of the 51 posts, 43 were positive.

By contrast, a month-long survey of American political leaders found the posts (then called tweets) were fairly evenly divided between positive and negative. Out of 250 tweets, 115 were negative and 108 were positive. 

That survey, conducted by a different group of students in a St. Bonaventure University Media and Democracy course, showed tweets from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

In the U.S survey, McCarthy tweeted the most with 116 tweets. Sunak was the most prolific poster of the British leaders with 30 of the 51 posts, followed by Starmer who posted 13 times and Flynn with eight. Davey did not post during the duration of the survey but did post immediately after the survey period.

The U.K. survey was conducted at Trinity College, Oxford University, where St. Bonaventure students studied this summer as part of the university’s Francis E. Kelley Oxford Program. The U.S survey was conducted stateside in April. Jandoli Institute Executive Director Richard Lee taught both coures.

Categories: Jandoli Institute, Media, Politics, Research