Brexit debate results: Boris Johnson v Nicola Sturgeon

On the 9^th of June, a second EU referendum debate was televised, with Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon the most prominent figures on the opposing sides.

A few days earlier, the first debate resulted in the pro-Brexit Nigel Farage seeing a 29% day-on-day fall in sentiment. While sentiment towards David Cameron also fell, it was only by 6%, meaning the pro-remain campaign seemed to have comfortably won that round.

To understand the affect of the second debate, we once again turned to our comprehensive monitoring and media content analysis platform to examine sentiment trends around the debate.

The debate consisted of Nicola Sturgeon, Angela Eagle, Amber Rudd, Julie Etchingham, Andrea Leadsom, Gisela Stuart and Boris Johnson, but we’ve focused on the two figures most under spotlight, Johnson and Sturgeon.

Figure 1: Johnson v Sturgeon sentiment scores following Brexit debate

Boris Johnson appears to have performed best on this occasion, ranking 4% above his monthly average, and also seeing a 5% day-on-day improvement.

Sturgeon’s sentiment only fell 2% day-on-day, but it was 9% below her monthly average. While not as big a margin as previously seen with Cameron v Farage, this will be disappointing to the pro-remain campaign as Sturgeon had a higher average sentiment rating than Johnson over the prior 31 days, and had been ahead in the four days before the debate.

Figure 2: Johnson v Sturgeon sentiment scores leading up to Brexit debate