Adelbury has launched a weekly tracker of UK political podcasts, measuring how often politicians, political parties and issues are discussed across 37 programmes.
The UK Political Podcast Tracker is the first tool from Adelbury Labs. It analyses each week’s episodes, counts mentions of people, parties and topics, then reports the results as a share of voice and mentions per hour.
Seven editions are available, covering 28 August to 15 October 2026. Together, they analyse 184 episodes containing 92 hours of political discussion.
What the tracker reveals
Andy Burnham is the most-mentioned person across the seven editions, accounting for 29.6 per cent of all mentions of people. Donald Trump is second on 19.0 per cent, followed by Keir Starmer on 12.0 per cent.
Labour leads the political parties with 35.8 per cent of party mentions, ahead of the Conservatives on 24.4 per cent and Reform UK on 21.9 per cent.
The weekly results show how political attention changes. In the week beginning 4 September, Reform UK received almost twice as many mentions as Labour. During Labour’s conference week, Labour was mentioned more than twice as often as all the other parties combined.
Measuring political discussion
Political podcasts have become a regular part of how people follow British politics, but tracking discussion across dozens of programmes is more difficult than measuring written news coverage.
For politicians, organisations and those responsible for their reputations, the tracker provides a way to see who is receiving attention, which issues are being discussed and how those patterns change over time.
The figures measure the frequency of mentions, not the amount of time devoted to a subject or whether the discussion is favourable or critical.
Adelbury founder Stephen Davies said: “Political podcasts have become an important part of how people understand politics, form opinions and follow policy debates. They give politicians, journalists and commentators hours of airtime to discuss the people and issues shaping public life.
“We wanted to understand who is getting that attention, which issues dominate the conversation and how that changes over time. By tracking these discussions systematically, we can begin to see patterns that would otherwise be difficult to identify, giving anyone interested in politics, public affairs or reputation a clearer picture of what is being discussed and by whom.”
The tracker also flags weeks with fewer episodes, helping readers assess the reliability of week-to-week comparisons. New editions are published weekly.
Press contact: hello@adelbury.com
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