TikTok has emerged as a key battleground in this year’s General Election. Some have even dubbed it the ‘UK’s first TikTok election’ after both Labour and the Conservatives opened accounts on the social platform shortly after PM Rishi Sunak’s rain-soaked announcement on the Downing Street steps.

While the purse strings have been loosened by last year’s change to the national spending cap – raised by 80% – political ads are banned on TikTok, so success on the platform is dependent on engaging potential voters organically, which can be difficult because of the platform’s algorithm. But which party is having the most success?

Well, here at DAIVID we looked at each TikTok channel from the main parties across England to see whose content and which issues are resonating emotionally with voters. To help, we employed our advanced creative testing technology – including facial coding, eye tracking and surveys – on 900 nationally representative UK voters to measure the effectiveness of the content outside of the platform’s notoriously opaque algorithm.

Here’s what we found:

Numbers stack up for Labour

It’s clear Labour has identified TikTok as a key area in the battle for No.10. Despite setting up their account just days after the announcement, Labour posted 54 videos to the Tories’ 14 in May alone. 

The result has been pretty encouraging, with Labour gaining 189K TikTok followers since its inception compared to the Tories’ 57K. That puts it ahead of The Reform Party (162K), who unlike Labour and the Conservatives, have had a TikTok account for a while.  

Engagement has also been a lot higher than the Conservatives, with Labour’s content generating 4.4M likes compared with the Tories’ 545K.  

Humour is a clear strategy, wth Labour and Lib Dems tapping into internet culture

So what has been Labour’s content strategy? Well, while in their paid ad strategy they’ve focused on videos that talk more about party leader Keir Starmer’s background and local issues, its TikTok channel is a mesh of different types of content. 

From interviews with voters to funny attack ads – it looks like they’re throwing a few things at the wall to see which sticks. But, like the Lib Dems’ TikTok strategy, one of the key pieces of content is using existing TikTok memes to attack the Tories. 

Examples include a series of well-known TikTok memes, such as Cilla Black’s singing “Surprise, Surprise” and Bob Mortimer reading a card on TV quick show “Would I Lie To You”, to criticise Sunak’s National Service policy idea. 

There is also a regular dose of videos dedicated to poking fun at Rishi’s various election gaffes, such as ”Rishi’s Campaign Diary” and ”Rishi Sunk”.

And it’s working, with our analysis finding that Labour’s TikTok content is generating the most laughs among viewers on average. The Labour videos that generated the most chuckles were “The Big Short: Rishi Sunak” (23.1%) and “Rishi Sunk” (22.4%), which both elicited stronger levels of amusement than the average UK ad. Not bad for a political party. 

However, despite taking the overall title, both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives created funnier individual TikTok videos. The Lib Dems’ “Are You In Or Out?”, which uses a film clip of The Rock and Kevin Hart to poke fun at the Tories’ national service plan, was the funniest, making 28.4% of viewers laugh. 

The Tories, who were runners-up overall despite taking a much more serious approach generally, also bagged second and third spots, with “We Think The Punchbag Won This One” (26.4%) and “Labour’s Biggest Policy Announcement Was A Stolen Logo” (24.3%) respectively. 

Reform and Green are the TikTok channels most likely to bore people

While Reform leader Nigel Farage bemoans the “most boring General Election ever”, he really needs to start looking closer to home. That’s because, along with the Greens, Reform’s TikTok channel is the one most likely to bore viewers. On average 11.2% of people watching both parties’ TikTok videos found the content tedious, which is above the UK norm (10.5%) and pretty telling for a channel dependent on organic engagement. 

It’s not surprising. Both have tended to steer clear of making funny videos and instead have filled their respective channels with serious, anger-inducing clips of speeches, political broadcasts  and, in Reform’s case, straight-to-camera pieces on various topics, including the cost of living and house prices. 

Meanwhile, you can’t help but feel that The Green Party are really missing a trick when it comes to TikTok. The environment and climate are big, passionate topics across the social platform, but while others have created content specifically for TikTok, the Greens tend to focus on rehashed TV interviews and speeches. 

However, there are signs they are starting to do better, with their funny response to the ITV Leaders Debate last week generating the strongest positive emotions of any TikTok video we tested (54.4%). 

Tories need to give their leader less screen time

If the Tories want to do better on TikTok, they should consider focusing more on the issues and less on their leader.

That’s because one of the interesting trends we noticed when looking at people’s second-by-second emotions while watching the videos is the noticeable shift in mood when the PM comes on screen. Negative emotions peak and positives dip when Rishi appears in frame. 

So to improve their chances, they may want to consider hiding him under a blanket for the rest of the election.

A much better strategy would also be to use younger party members that TikTok viewers could relate to, like the Reform Party. 

They should also reconsider the issues they talk about, with “Pensioners Can’t Name One Labour Proposal” an odd choice for such a young audience.  

“This Will Change Lives” does tackle a subject that is relevant to young voters: the Tories’ national service plans. It gets the message across, but Rishi’s style is a little awkward, coming across like a father passive aggressively telling his children off for not understanding their maths homework. Despite that, the video generates the fourth strongest positive emotional response of all the TikTok videos we tested.  

Labour and Reform use anger at Tories to motivate voters

Normally with brand campaigns, positive emotions are key, but that’s not the case with political ads (especially in this election), with parties using anger and frustration at the current government to motivate voters to act.

That’s reflected in the positive emotions generated by each TikTok channel, with every single main party generating lower-than-average levels of positivity. The Green Party (48.6%) and the Conservatives (46.7%) are the closest parties to the norm (48.7%).

On the flipside, intense negative emotions are all way above the average, with Labour and the Reform Party both 29% above the UK average. 

Normally, as a brand you would be worried by such a stat, but this is a deliberate attempt by both to whip up voters to act and vote against the current government. 

No surprise then that Labour’s TikTok content generated more anger, contempt and disgust than any other party, led by videos such as “Rishi is Lying to You”. Meanwhile, Reform’s TikTok content generated the most intense feelings of anxiety, fear and horror, mainly through videos such as “Average House Prices” and  “The Big University Rip-off”.

However, the knock-on effect of that is that it does little to inspire trust at a time when TikTok users are being bombarded with so much misinformation and fake content on the platform. 

Both Labour (7.4%) and Reform’s TikTok content (6.7%) finished at the bottom of the table when it came to feelings of trust, which is probably more a sad reflection on the state of UK politics.