Greens satirical video tops YouTube polls

The surge in support for the Green party may be showing signs of slowing but the party's political broadcast is proving a huge hit online. Hours before it was due to be broadcast on BBC2 the satirical video had already become the election campaign's most viewed party political broadcast on YouTube, surpassing Labour's, which stars Sherlock actor Martin Freeman.

It has recorded more than 260,000 views, compared with 255,136 for Labour, 131,808 for the Conservatives, 4,830 for the Liberal Democrats and 20,441 for Ukip. The YouTube viewing figures typically receive a further boost once the videos are aired on television.

The Greens, who are polling at about 4.7 per cent, will air the broadcast at 6.55pm on Thursday.

The popularity of the Greens video comes at a time when broadcasts are more important as agenda-setting tools online than adverts on television, according to Vincent Campbell, researcher into political communication at Leicester university.

"It is very difficult to measure the outcome of this kind of viral party election broadcast at the ballot box . . . but it might reinforce peoples' propensity to vote if friends share the video and make them stop feeling it is socially awkward to vote Green," he said. "The main way party broadcasts are useful now is to generate conversation online."

According to Mark Cridge, an elected member of the Green party executive, the broadcast is designed to bring together multiple digital platforms. "It has exceeded [the party's] expectations and called into question how politicians engage with voters," he said.

"We've put a lot of emphasis on social media and digital campaigning to extend our message to people who haven't accessed politics previously and satire and comedy is a fantastic way of doing that. Regardless of what people thought of the Green party, everybody liked the video."

The Green broadcast features a boyband with lookalikes of the four main party leaders, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, singing to the chorus: "It's sweeter when we all agree / A party political harmony".

But Dr Campbell said political broadcasts are unlikely to have as much impact today as they did during the 2010 general election, when they were viewed by almost 9m people.

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