Immigration is the top political issue that people are talking about in the run up to the election, a pilot study by a firm measuring the spread of topics by word of mouth indicates.

Initial work by the Keller Fay Group found that when prompted 40% of the 1,500 16-69 year olds they surveyed said they had discussed a party, leader or politician in the past day.

Of those, 43% had talked about immigration - the most popular topic - followed by 32% who were talking about the NHS or health in the UK generally.

This pilot data mirrors the results of Ipsos Mori’s issues tracker, which in February had the NHS as the issue 41% of the electorate said was most important. The results showed immigration as the second most important concern at 34%.

This will give further encouragement to Ukip’s Nigel Farage despite the party’s slowing in recent polls. While any talk of the NHS will benefit Labour’s Ed Miliband.

Farage’s party are viewed as the strongest on immigration and seem unlikely to lose much ground on that front to the Conservatives - especially with the failure of the current government to meet its strict net migration targets.

The moderately good news for Miliband is that nearly one in three people who discuss politics talk about the NHS - Labour for some time now has managed to become identified as the party most capable of protecting the health service.

Are people talking about the election?

Where the Keller Fay Group data differs from polling companies tracking issues is that the former aims to measure what people are talking about day-to-day with their friends, family and colleagues, and the influence word-of-mouth has on these conversations.

The work found that one in five people sampled were discussing politics daily. Based on previous elections, the researchers think that this will rise to somewhere closer to 40% in the days before the votes are cast.

The one in five increased to 40% of those surveyed when they were prompted to ask if they had discussed a specific party, leader or politicians.

Worryingly for Labour and Ed Miliband, the party were behind both Conservatives and smaller party Ukip when it came to how much discussion they were generating.

Methodology and future plans

The three week pilot took place between 12 January and 1 February this year. From 9 March, the Keller Fay Group are going to start tracking what people are talking about right up until the week of the election.

 Each week 500 people answering surveys for market research panels will be drawn from a nationally representative sample of people aged between 16 and 69.

This ongoing online survey will be used to gather data about people’s conversations of all kinds: in-person, on the phone, text, email and social media. The results will give an insight into what about the election is spurring people into discussion

Source: The Guardian