Trust in politicians appears to have grown as a result of the recent General Election campaign, a new Weber Shandwick poll shows.

A raft of questions probing voter cynicism reveals a significant decline in skeptical attitudes between August 2009 and May 2010.

The percentage saying MPs cared more about themselves than voters dropped 11 points from 75% to 64%. Those saying a change of government doesn’t really change anything fell from 52% to 44%.

The trend would tend to suggest that the campaign has gone some way to help heal some of the scars of the MPs’ expenses scandal, but does not take account of reactions to the formation of the coalition government.

The poll also looks at how communications techniques impacted on the votes cast. The percentage saying that political parties do not communicate in a relevant way fell from 61% to 54%. But those saying that the personality of the party leader helped them decide how to vote also fell from 46% to 33% – despite the apparent impact of the TV debates.

When asked what communications techniques had an impact on their voting decision, those polled put national TV news at 37%, the televised debates at 34%, with party political broadcasts and advertising at 27%. National print media was ranked at 22% and local print and broadcast media at 21%. News websites polled 20%. Friends and family influence 18%, traditional canvassing 14% and official party activity online 13%.

Interestingly, the impact of social media, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook, was low at 6%.

Lib Dem voters seem to be the most open-minded in the campaign, with 67% making their decision during the campaign itself, versus 52% for Labour and 45% for the Conservatives.

Commenting on the survey, Weber Shandwick’s CEO Europe, Colin Byrne said: “It’s part of the new politics that the public is becoming more engaged and less cynical about politicians – a real case of man bites dog.

“The Weber Shandwick poll also reveals the enduring power of television. Even if it did not translate into seats for Nick Clegg, it has lent credibility to his assumption of the role of Deputy Prime Minister. If Lib Dem voters are the most open-minded, one might also expect them to be the most tolerant of the novel power-sharing deal forged by this new government.

He continued: “Finally, it is fair to say that we did not see a digital election – but we should expect the role of social media to grow steadily in elections to come. We should expect much higher figures for the impact of online campaigning when we reach the 2015 General Election.”

Polling methodology and timing

Results are from a nationally representative online survey of 1,021 adults, age 18 and above, conducted by KRC Research from 7th-9th May 2010. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. The pre-wave research was conducted among 1,017 adults, aged 18 and above, from 17th to 23rd August 2009.