THE GUARDIAN: Media coverage of Ukip helped to increase its support, study says

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Prof Rob Ford of the University of Manchester, who has written about the rise of Ukip but was not involved in this research, said the paper does appear to show journalists “can move the dial a little bit by getting overexcited”.

He said the level of media coverage for Ukip has almost always been in excess of what it is polling and that may well have introduced the party to people who would start to consider voting for it. However, he warned against putting too much emphasis on one factor to explain the party’s historic rise in popularity: “There were lots of people in lots of surveys who don’t read any newspapers at all and their level of support for Ukip wasn’t substantially different – so where are they getting it from?”