BRADFORD West voters in the General Election cared more about "bread and butter" issues than the international issues raised by standing MP George Galloway, a new study has found.

The University of Bradford's Sociology and Criminology department carried out research into voting habits in the constituency during last May's election when Respect MP George Galloway was defending his seat against Labour candidate Naz Shah.

The highly charge contest culminated with Mr Galloway losing the seat to Ms Shah by more than 11,000 votes.

The study, by Parveen Akhtar, found that despite claims it would be a new type of election, with social media heavily influencing votes, voters tended to develop their views through traditional media.

And when making their decision cared more about local issues like education and health than causes like Palestine and the Middle East that Mr Galloway emphasised in his campaign.

During the election period the team questioned 182 people about their voting habits, and what influenced them to vote the way they did.

They found that traditional media rather than social media still had the biggest say in how people voted.

When asked what was the most important factor in determining who they voted for, 28 per cent said media like newspapers or TV, while 26 per cent said family, and 22 per cent said friends.

Despite the prediction this year would be the "social media" election, only ten per cent said their vote was influenced by what they saw on Twitter and Facebook.

Mrs Akhtar said: "Some of the key findings were that traditional media and traditional campaigning were still the most important factor. Social media complimented, rather than replaced traditional media in this election."

She also feels that comments by Mr Galloway on forced marriage and religion meant he lost the support of women, a group that helped him into power in 2012.

Ms Shah had spoken of an arranged marriage she was forced into at age 15, and at one particularly heated hustings event Mr Galloway accused her of lying about the marriage, producing a marriage certificate that he said showed she was in fact 16 at the time.

Despite Mr Galloway raising issues such as the conflict in Palestine, the voters questioned as part of the survey listed their main concerns as education, health and the economy, issues they felt he did not address convincingly enough.

Jim Goddard, part of the research team, said: "One of the findings was the normality of Bradford voters.

"The issues they were most concerned about were bread and butter issues about health and the economy. A lot of the issues raised by George Galloway weren't the main concerns of many voters."

The University, based in the Bradford West constituency, was used as one of the polling stations during the election.

Ms Shah said she was not surprised to hear that local issues played a big part as these had formed the backbone of her election campaign.

She said the "social media campaign" against her had become "quite nasty" during the election and it was pleasing to know that people had not taken much notice of it.

"Our campaign focused on local issues - education and health. We were on the right track to focus on the needs of people in Bradford West. What matters to people here are education and employment."

Mr Galloway was not available to comment.