We are back!
The Slugger Party Election Broadcast Review has returned to give its assessment of the party election broadcasts of the 2023 local elections. A valuable public service to election nerds and people who have devoted hours and days of effort to create these three minute wonders.
A bit like the Eurovision Song Contest, high scores aren’t any indication of likely success at the ballot box. It’s a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the aesthetics and impact of one aspect of the campaign.
This year’s panel of judges will look familiar to aficionados: Chris Brown (joint managing director of Brown O’Connor Communications) and Allison Morris (Belfast Telegraph) joined Slugger’s Alan Meban and me for the latest edition of this near annual event.
If you’re playing along at home, pause the video when we mention each new party and watch the PEB (links below) before coming back and restarting. This year we just looked at the largest five parties – which kept the time down to just over half an hour – but we have supplied links to all the PEBs we could find on BBC iPlayer from NI parties large and small.
And the winner is ……
for anyone who doesn’t feel the need to watch the video and hear our pontifications ……
[but surely no one will comment without watching the video ……]
with 29.5 points ……
just a whisker ahead of the parties that arrived breathless at the finish line in second and third place …………
……
……
……
the Alliance Party!
David McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs
