People in Guernsey are used to having their say on social media, but when it comes to posts about politics nearly three in every four are negative, according to a new study.
Political PR firm Bridgehead Communications analysed more than 12,000 Facebook posts and comments over a nearly five year period up to this October.
Only a third of comments on non-political threads were negative, but when it came to comments on posts about politics and political issues that number jumped to 74%.
Bridgehead Founder William Walter said the “sharpest” comments were “about delivery failures, spending and broken promises – more than GST itself”.
The latest findings suggest that while so-called keyboard warriors may be a noisy presence in Bailiwick politics, the public’s anger is particularly concentrated around government failures, rather than individual policies.
Mr Walter has argued that better public data is needed to make Guernsey politics easier to scrutinise.
The firm, which includes a former UK Deputy Prime Minister in its ranks, has published a series of free online research projects examining political accountability and the island’s performance across public services and the economy.
Election goodwill was short-lived
The firm’s latest research, published under its ‘State of the Nation’ series, found that political comments were 2.2 times more likely to be negative than comments about other subjects.
It used AI to classify comments as ‘positive’, ‘neutral’ or ‘negative’, with a spot check revealing the model had more than 90% accuracy.
Despite the overwhelmingly negative comments on political posts, the percentage of positive and neutral comments does seem to have risen in the last three years, albeit slightly.
The figures cover comments on posts by BBC Guernsey, Bailiwick Express, the Guernsey Press, ITV Channel, Island FM and the States of Guernsey, as well as a public Facebook group.
Bridgehead said the 2025 election was the clearest break in the negative pattern.
In the weeks following the vote, negative comments fell to about 45%, while positive comments rose to around 33%, largely reflecting congratulations to newly elected deputies.
But the goodwill did not last – by September, the negative share had climbed back to 68%, with positive comments falling to 6%.
GST vote sparks record anger
Unsurprisingly, October’s tax reform vote appears to have struck a particular nerve.
In the first 17 days of October, 22.5% of reactions to political posts used Facebook’s built in ‘Angry’ emoji, the highest of any month since the start of 2022.
That amounted to 402 Angry reactions out of 1,790 reactions to political posts.
The previous peak was 18.7% in November 2024, when the States approved the previous GST+ package.
The latest figures also show a clear difference between reactions to tax posts and other content.
Angry reactions accounted for 14% of reactions to posts about GST and tax, compared with 3% on other political posts and 1.1% on everything else.
The research cautions that reactions and comments measure different things.
An Angry reaction does not necessarily mean someone is angry with the States, while a negative comment may express a considered view rather than a fleeting emotion.
Wrath at white elephants and waste
GST and tax was the biggest single political topic, accounting for around a quarter of the comments analysed. Of those comments, 76% were negative.
But the sharpest criticism was directed at government delivery, spending, and trust in politicians and civil service.
Bridgehead found that 92% of comments grouped under delivery failures, including IT contracts and tax-return problems, were negative.
Comments about spending and waste were 89% negative, while those concerning trust and mandate were 80% negative.
The report suggests that concerns about whether the States can deliver a new tax system are being fuelled by wider frustrations over government performance.
May not represent islanders’ views
The latest report forms part of a comprehensive set of metrics, which the authors say is intended to increase transparency in the island’s politics.
Earlier this year, the firm launched its Deputies Scorecard, which ranks deputies based on a series on data points including ‘words spoken in the States’, ‘Manifesto promises kept’, and ‘Committee Attendance’.
Deputies Sasha Kazantseva-Miller, Chris Blin, and Aidan Matthews currently sit top of Bridgehead’s leaderboard, with deputies Jayne Ozanne, David Goy, and Marc Laine deemed to be in the bottom three places.
The latest analysis covers public Facebook comments and focuses on the most-commented political posts, meaning heated discussions may be overrepresented.
The figures measure online comments and reactions, rather than the number of people expressing a particular view, and do not establish how representative or widespread those opinions are among islanders, its authors said.
A spot-check found 22 of 24 comments had been correctly labelled by AI, about 92% accurate, but the full dataset was not audited.
The report’s authors warned the findings may not be representative of islanders’ views.
Express has not independently verified the findings or the underlying data.
