Victorian election: Premier Daniel Andrews keeps Liberal opponent Matthew Guy in media shade

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has had huge traction in the media in 2022 compared to opposition leader Matthew Guy as the state counts down to Saturday’s election.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has dominated the headlines in 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Josie Hayden

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews has dominated the headlines in 2022 and has had three times the media coverage of his opponent, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy.

Figures from media monitoring company Streem show that across print, television, radio and online news outlets, the Labor leader has dominated almost 76 per cent of the media’s coverage of Victorian politics, compared with just 24 per cent by the Liberal leader.

The data was collected from January 1 through until Sunday.

While it’s expected the Premier attracts more media coverage than his opponent, the scale at which Mr Andrews has gained much greater traction is also boosted by his social media following – the Premier has about 1.759 million followers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, while Mr Guy has about 130,000 followers.

According to most polls, Mr Andrews is expected to win a third term at this Saturday’s election. Labor currently holds 55 of the 88 lower house seats.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Nicki Connolly

During the election campaign, which started at the beginning of the month, Mr Andrews has done very few one-on-one media interviews, but last week went on a morning breakfast TV blitz when he appeared on Sunrise, Today and Weekend Breakfast.

He also did a sit-down interview with The Guardian.

Mr Guy has been doing many more sit-down interviews with journalists during the campaign including Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun, The Australian, Sky News Australia, ABC Radio afternoons program with Rafael Epstein, ABC TV and The Age.

He also did a TV interview alongside his wife Renae at their Templestowe home that aired on Seven’s 6pm news bulletin on Friday, and earlier in the week he had a long interview on 3AW’s mornings program with host Neil Mitchell.

Mr Andrews has not appeared on Mitchell’s program for almost six years.

Mr Andrews and Mr Guy will go head to head only once during the campaign – on Tuesday they will have a debate at the Sky News Australia and Herald Sun’s People’s Forum.

The debate, which will be aired live just four days out from the election, will involve the pair taking questions from 100 undecided voters.