Who won the online voice during last night’s election debate?

New research from Starcom MediaVest Group around the election debates shows that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is enjoying the most positive share of voice online, but David Cameron benefited most from last night’s debate.

The data shows how discussions on social media networks developed and changed in terms of attitudes towards the party leaders in the lead up and wind down of last night’s debate.

Looking at total discussions about Cameron, Clegg and Brown, Clegg held a 50% share of discussion before and after the event. When looking at total positive discussions after the debate, Clegg again leads with 49%, Cameron 28%, Brown 23%.

Cameron however, saw his share of positive discussion around him increase by 9 percentage points (when comparing the two periods), with Brown dropping 2 percentage points in share and Clegg dipping 6 percentage points (PP) in share.

Significantly, said Starcom, Cameron also saw the biggest shift when it comes to negative discussion, increasing his share amongst the leaders by 6 PP, Brown remaining steady and Clegg reducing his share of negative comments by 6 PP.

Simon Stanforth, group research director, Starcom MediaVest Group, said: “There are noticeable differences between the polls and online sentiment, with Cameron leading in most polls and Clegg the clear winner in the numbers of positive online discussions – it will be interesting to see which ends up being the best predictor of actual voting on the 6th May.”

The Starcom analysis is based on discussions 24 hours prior to the debate and then from the beginning of the debate to 4am, and based on an analysis of over 1 million UK blogs, sites, forums, and social networks (including twitter feeds and facebook). The data was supplied by Whitevector.