How did the trends in television's news agenda compare with trends in the electorate's agenda in 1987? Chapter 4 showed that television's issue agenda was generally biased towards security issues when compared with the electorate's own agenda. But perhaps television edged closer to the public, or the public edged closer to television, as the campaign progressed? Unemployment came top of the list of issues that the public thought the parties' should be' talking about . Throughout the first two weeks of the campaign almost twothirds of our panel cited unemployment as the' main issue' that should be discussed but it got little coverage on television news. In the first week of the campaign over half our panel felt Labour was addressing the issue, but under one-third thought that about the Alliance and only one-fifth about the Conservative party.