It's all there in black and white -- Clinton Tallies Drop Dramatically

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff
A low point in press coverage for Hillary Clinton came on Friday May 16.

That day marked one of the lowest tallies in headline coverage for her in quite a while. Her name only made it to the top of 67 articles found in the more than 6,000 mainstream publications analyzed by Dow Jones Insight. That day’s data also showed that John McCain passed her in headline coverage for the first time in months, with 174 articles mentioning him in the headline.

The gap between Clinton and Obama in headline counts also became dramatic Friday -- Obama had 322 articles with his name in a large font. Not since March 21 (when Obama was getting headlines because of his passport records being breached) was the gap so large between him and Clinton in headline mentions.

And it isn't just headline writers who are focusing less on Clinton as her presidential goal continues to fade. The total number of raw mentions of the three candidates in the mainstream media also shows Clinton slipping out of the picture. During the period of Thursday to Monday, May 15-19, Obama has clearly opened a gap with Clinton in journalist mindshare. Obama had 8,203 mentions in that period to Clinton’s 5,537. During the previous Thursday to Monday, the two were nearly evenly matched in raw mentions.
Methodology: Total media coverage includes analysis of more than 6,000 publications. The concept of “mentions” is a tally of individual occurrences of the candidate’s name within the body of the article.

Handwriting on the Wall for Clinton?

Dow Jones Insight Staff
We don’t know if it’s on the wall, but it’s on the Dow Jones Insight Discovery Chart for Hillary Clinton (below). Over the past two days, the most common newly discovered terms occurring in close proximity* to Clinton’s name are quite telling, to say the least.

Press mentions of “once-imposing lead,” “big problem” and “worst thing” probably say it all, but several of the less-obvious terms listed in the chart also indicate it may finally be over for Clinton’s presidential run: as Obama added four “more endorsements,” including two from “Virgin Islands” superdelegates who had previously endorsed Clinton, he exceed Clinton in the superdelegate count for the first time. Meanwhile, Obama strategist “David Axelrod” very clearly turned his campaign’s attention toward McCain, though Clinton strategist “Howard Wolfson” vowed to continue on.

* “Close proximity” is defined as within about 50 words.

Smaller Field Not Yet Helping McCain’s Coverage

Dow Jones Insight Staff

With most now conceding that the presidential election has become a two-horse race, we thought we’d see if the election coverage was beginning to reflect the new reality. One would expect that McCain’s share, which had been low in comparison to the battling Democrats in our previous analyses, would improve in relation to Obama’s, with Obama and McCain focusing more directly on one another. However, that assumption has proved wrong, at least so far.

From May 1 to May 5 – the five days leading up to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, when Clinton’s chances to win the nomination looked stronger – McCain had 18,265 mentions in all tracked media versus 32,822 for Obama. That translated into a 36% share for McCain versus 64% for Obama (when considering those articles in which one or the other, or both, were mentioned). From May 8 to May 12 – the most recent five-day period since the primaries – McCain has received 13,496 mentions to Obama’s 23,337, for a share of 37%, narrowing the gap by just a single percentage point.

McCain did a slightly better job narrowing the gap when considering headline mentions only, though his overall share of headline coverage was lower than it was for all press mentions. Before the primaries, McCain had 6,660 headline mentions in all tracked sources, or 23% of the total, versus 22,457, or 77%, for Obama. Post-primaries, McCain raised his share to 26%, or 5,061, compared with 14,492, or 74% for Obama, for a three-percentage-point improvement.

Still, the results lead us to wonder if the McCain team either doesn’t think it’s quite over for Hillary or just hasn’t pushed hard against their remaining opponent. Either way, they’re going to have to work harder to get their candidate a competitive share of coverage.

Methodology: Sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

Blogs Ahead of the Curve Again?

Dow Jones Insight Staff
Since the May 5 primaries, McCain has received a slightly more competitive share of coverage versus Obama in blogs than he has in all tracked media. With Clinton still a factor (May 1-5), McCain had 2,987 mentions in blogs, or 36% of the total McCain/Obama coverage, versus 5,383 mentions, or 64% of the total, for Obama, matching his share of mentions in all media. But in the most recent five days post-primary (May 8-12), McCain had 2,101 mentions in blogs, or 38%, versus 3,491, or 62%, for Obama.

Either way, McCain has gotten a bit closer to his fair share in the blogs than in the mainstream press.

Methodology: Reflects Obama and McCain mentions from 2 million of the most influential blogs.

Some Surprises on Global Issues

Dow Jones Insight Staff
Now that the primary battles are coming to an end, the candidates likely will begin to focus more of their attention on the crucial issues that will be faced by the next president rather than the more tangential matters they’ve highlighted recently to cut down their opponents. How have they fared recently on some key global issues?

Over the past month, Obama has largely owned the “terrorism” issue in the tracked mainstream press sources, for better and for worse. (“Owned” in this context means his name occurred in close proximity* to specific terms associated with the issue.) His coverage was driven in part by articles referencing his pastor’s comments, the McCain-fueled controversy over Hamas’s endorsement of him and his comments that he would meet with Iran, Cuba and North Korea if he were elected (which also drove him to be the candidate most closely associated with North Korea). Clinton led the way on Iran with her controversial comments about “obliterating” Iran should it attack Israel. McCain, despite being the most in favor of the war in Iraq, was actually the least associated of the three candidates with the issue of Iraq over the past month.

* “Close proximity” is defined as within about 50 words

’Elitist’ is so last week. 'Electability' is what it’s all about now

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The pejorative-sounding “elitist” has been thrown around for years by the GOP when knocking down the Democrats: John Kerry was one. Hillary Clinton too. Obama had the label tagged to him several times in the past 12 months. But after the kerfuffle in which Obama in early April made his now well-discussed comments about small town residents being bitter, the moniker was tied more decidedly to him. During the period of April 11 to 15, it seemed to be the only thing being discussed. But buzzwords can have short lives. The somewhat contrived word "electability" burst on April 17 as Clinton was forced to admit during the last debate before the Pennsylvania primary that her Democratic rival could beat McCain. By April 19 it seems “elitist” was all but forgotten, with “electability” being the word of the day again the day after the Pennsylvania primary.

Note: Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential bloggers; and more than 6,000 message boards.

McCain Coverage Flat Lines

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

McCain's strategists, frustrated with the extreme media attention on the Democratic race, said in early April they would push hard for the entire month to get the candidate back on the front page. Their four-week road show seems to have accomplished little, as Dow Jones Insight's analysis shows the raw number of mentions of McCain in all media virtually flat since mid-March. It shows an average of 27,000 mentions of his name each week (out of about 5 million documents analyzed per week in the mainstream and social media.) That flat line is not much different when splitting out social media from mainstream media.

Note: Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential bloggers; and more than 6,000 message boards.

Faithfully Talking about Obama

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff
The question of faith – who has enough or too much of it – has become a dominant issue for Obama in the mainstream media. That’s even more the case in the often-polarized blogosphere, but the allure of faith, driven by Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, seemed to impact the press more this week than bloggers, according to analysis of data gathered in Dow Jones Insight.

For the past 90 days the issue of faith has been attached more to Obama than it has to Clinton and McCain in the mainstream media (26% of all mentions of Obama contained some reference to the concept of faith, while only 21% each of McCain’s and Clinton’s did).

With everyone’s attention this week again focused on Wright, the press’s coverage of faith as a percentage of all issues covered went from 23% (549,000 candidate-faith mentions versus 2.43 million total candidate-issue mentions) over the past 90 days to 26% in the last 7 days. Obama’s percentage of faith mentions increased from 26% to 33%, while Clinton’s went up 4 percentage points to 25% and McCain’s went down 3 percentage points this week to 18%.

Summary Table 1: Mainstream Media Coverage - ‘Faith” by Candidate





Those in blogs and boards seemed to obsess about it less, though, during the past 7 days. Faith was mentioned with Obama 47% of the time to Clinton’s 29% and McCain’s 30%. This is down from the last 90 days, in which 52% of all issues being discussed with Obama had some mention of faith (to McCain’s 38% and Clinton’s 36%).

Summary Table 2: Blog and Board Coverage - ‘Faith” by Candidate





Note: Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential bloggers; and more than 6,000 message boards.

Pennsylvania Coverage Race Too Close To Call

Dow Jones Insight Staff

Like the race for votes, the race for press coverage in Pennsylvania ahead of next Tuesday’s primary remains tight, but in the most recent two-week period, the coverage advantage has reverted back to Clinton. While Obama had pulled ahead in our last review, since April 1 Clinton received more mentions in the Pennsylvania press (3,033) than Obama (2,920), giving her 51% of all Democratic mentions to Obama’s 49%.

Methodology: Pennsylvania publications analyzed include 146 print and Web sites of mainstream media (excluding blogs).

Experience is Out, Change is In…

Dow Jones Insight Staff

On April 6, the Clinton campaign announced the demotion of its chief strategist, Mark Penn, over a conflict of interest in his role as private lobbyist for a free-trade deal that Clinton opposes. Prior to his departure, Penn had been the key proponent of the campaign’s strategy to emphasize Clinton’s experience, amid criticism from those who believed that such a focus was sharply at odds with an electorate clamoring for change.

We took a look at Clinton’s coverage in the mainstream media on the issues of “experience” and “change” over the past month to see if there is evidence of a shift in messaging from “during Penn” to “after Penn,” and it looks like there is.

With Penn at the helm from mid-March to early April, “experience” and “change” each had a 36% share of voice of the four tracked issues. But after his demotion, “change” increased to a 41% share, while “experience” dropped sharply to just 20%.

Methodology: “Close proximity” is defined as within about 50 words. Sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts.

…But Bitterness Wins the Day

Dow Jones Insight Staff

The candidates espouse hope, but in the media, the campaign’s negative aspects have tended to prevail. With the recent dust-up over Obama’s comments about the “bitter” working class, the term “bitter” has surged past “change,” generating 3,058 mentions in the global mainstream and social media since April 1, versus 2,841 for “change,” and become the campaign buzzword of the month. Both Clinton and McCain have called Obama’s remarks “elitist” (1,920 mentions), while Clinton has also labeled them “divisive” (573). “Hope” continues to hang in there, with 1,563 mentions.


Methodology: Sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

McCain Not Minding the Gap

Dow Jones Insight Staff

In our last post, we said we’d report back on whether the McCain campaign team was able to close the gap between McCain’s coverage and that of the battling Democrats with the help of a series of themed appearances throughout April. Two weeks into the effort, the answer is: not really. McCain remains a distant third when analyzing mainstream and social media on a global basis.

For all of March, mentions of McCain had represented 23% of all mentions of the three candidates, compared with Obama’s 41% and Clinton’s 37%. For the first two weeks of April, McCain’s share of mentions inched up just a percentage point, to 24%, while Obama and Clinton had 38% apiece.*

*Totals may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Methodology: Sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

Did Blogs Lead the Way on Wright Controversy?

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy was on the rise at the time of our last post, helping drive Barack Obama’s overall coverage higher. But what has happened since?

In both blogs and newspapers, Obama’s coverage bump was quite pronounced during the week of the 17th. But as the charts below demonstrate, the increase in coverage on blogs came days earlier than the increase in newspapers (with peaks on the 18th and 19th for blogs, compared with the 19th through 21st for newspapers), it was far steeper, and it dropped off far more quickly, perhaps confirming what some have said – that the mainstream media was slow to pick up this story.

Note that these two charts use different scales. In terms of overall volumes, newspaper excerpts mentioning Obama exceeded the number of mentions from the tracked blogs, with newspapers topping out at 3,305 on the 21st, and blog mentions reaching 1,988 on the 18th and 1,989 on the 19th.






Methodology: Sources in the analysis for Chart 1 include 56,972 unique posts from among 2 million of the most influential blogs, dated between March 1 and March 31. Sources in the analysis for Chart 2 include approximately 5,650 English-language newspapers and their related Web sites. The total number of documents analyzed for Chart 2 equals 162,357 from March 1 to March 31, 2008.

Obama Ahead of Clinton in Economy-Related Blog Posts

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Another topic where blog chatter about the Democratic candidates seemed to exceed, if not precede, mainstream media coverage was the economy.

On the blogs, Obama’s name was mentioned in close proximity to words associated with the economy 1,228 times during March, far more often than Hillary Clinton’s 772. But in newspapers, the two candidates’ association with economic issues was nearly equal, with 4,823 for Obama and 4,751 for Clinton. (The respective totals are represented by the two bars in each chart marked “Barack Obama” and “Hillary Clinton.”)

When considering headlines only – those cases in which one or the other of the candidates’ names was mentioned in a headline and in close proximity to economic terminology – Obama’s lead in blogs was even greater (853 for Obama to 267 for Clinton), while in newspapers the two were again quite close (3,694 vs 3,457). The disparity in blog headlines would seem to indicate that Obama was the intended focus of more posts, whether the context of those posts was positive or negative (and since this is the blogosphere, there were plenty of both).

The two candidates’ coverage in the analyzed period reflects speeches outlining their own economic plans, criticism of their rival’s plan, and questions about their position on NAFTA. Obama’s blog coverage was also bolstered by the many postings of his speech on race, which included several economic references, and comments about his speech linking the war in Iraq to U.S. economic problems.

Methodology: “Close proximity” is defined as within about 50 words. Sources in the analysis for Chart 3 include 3,135 unique posts from among 2 million of the most influential blogs, dated between March 1 and March 31. Sources in the analysis for Chart 4 include approximately 5,650 English-language newspapers and their related Web sites.

McCain Team Looks to Boost Press Coverage in April

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The Web site Politico reported recently that the presumed Republican candidate's campaign team plans to step up efforts to keep McCain in the news in April, with a “Service to America” tour at the beginning of the month followed by specific themes in each week the rest of the month. While McCain has benefited by being somewhat on the sidelines as the Democrats duke it out, too little coverage could also have a downside. We’ll report back at mid-month on how the effort is going in terms of raising McCain’s overall coverage. For now, he remains a distant third when analyzing both mainstream and social media on a global basis.

Methodology: The total number of unique documents in the above analysis is 383,293. Sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

Dems Flip-Flop in Pennsylvania Coverage Race

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

In our previous post about the battle for coverage in the Pennsylvania press, we reported that Clinton was maintaining a small but definite edge in total number of mentions, but that has not been the case in the two weeks since.

With the exception of the days surrounding her swing through the Philadelphia area on the 25th – when she made a widely covered speech about the mortgage crisis, said that she “misspoke” about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia, and said Reverend Wright “wouldn’t have been my pastor” – the Pennsylvania coverage race has either shown large Obama leads (at the height of the Wright controversy during the week of the 18th), small Obama leads (around the 29th when he toured the state with, and was endorsed by, U.S. Senator Bob Casey) or been dead even.

As far as the total number of excerpts (each mention of a candidate's name) in the Pennsylvania press, from March 18-31 there were 2,772 total mentions of “Barack Obama” (or 41% of all mentions), 2,623 mentions of "Hillary Clinton" (39% of the total) and 1,302 mentions (or 19%) of “John McCain.” This reverses the figures from our previous post, which had Clinton at 41% and Obama at 39%.

Methodology: Pennsylvania publications analyzed include 146 print and Web sites of mainstream media (excluding blogs).

Controversies Bolster Negative Language in Election Coverage

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Controversy, not policy, drove much of the election coverage for the Democrats over the past week and a half, as a number of presidential supporters made news in ways that affected the candidates themselves.

Clinton supporters Eliot Spitzer and Geraldine Ferraro found themselves in the spotlight for unexpected reasons, while Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, were the subject of plenty of controversy for the senator.

In total, Clinton was mentioned in proximity to “Geraldine Ferraro” or “Ferraro” a total of 4,597 times during the analyzed period, in proximity to “Eliot Spitzer” or “Spitzer” 2,550 times, and near “Samantha Power” 1,465 times.

Obama, meanwhile, received 4,388 mentions in proximity to “Geraldine Ferraro” or “Ferraro,” and he was mentioned 3,183 times in proximity to “Rev Jeremiah Wright,” “Jeremiah Wright” or “Wright.” He was also mentioned 1,342 times near “Samantha Power.”

These assorted flaps contributed to a marked increase in negativity of mainstream press coverage, based on our review of the automated favorability analysis in Dow Jones Insight. Breaking the coverage down into two equal segments since our last favorability analysis, the system considered 83,528 press documents and found 30,406 of them to contain either favorable or unfavorable language dominating in reference to a particular candidate.

Looking only at non-neutral coverage, we found that:

March 7-12: Obama’s coverage was positive 24% of the time, up from 21% in the preceding weeklast period analyzed, while Clinton dropped to 13% from 21% and McCain fell to 20% from 24%. During this period, Obama’s advisor referred to Clinton as a “monster,” Ferraro made racially controversial remarks about Obama, and Spitzer was named in a prostitution scandal. All three resigned. Clinton’s coverage seems to have taken the bigger hit overall though, as Clinton was the target of one comment, the source-by-association-of another, and lost a super-delegate.

March 13-18: Obama’s positive coverage fell sharply to 9%, while Clinton’s slipped a bit further to 10% and McCain’s dropped to 12%. During this period, Obama’s association with his pastor was questioned by some, and all three candidates engaged in a war of words over Iraq.

Methodology: Favorability analysis is of English-language documents only and was generated by software-based analysis which has been shown to be 80% accurate in similar corpora. Favorable and unfavorable ratings are assigned based on the words found in close proximity to a candidate's name. All neutral documents were excluded. The remaining 30,406 documents are those with discernible favorability. The source set excludes social media and press releases and includes global English language newspapers, magazines, broadcast transcripts and newswires.

Clinton Still Leads in Pennsylvania Newspaper Coverage

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

In Pennsylvania, the press continued to show a tendency to talk about Clinton more than the other two candidates. By looking at the total number of excerpts (each mention of a candidate's name), we see that since our last count there were 1,530 mentions of "Hillary Clinton," compared with 1,455 mentions of "Barack Obama" and 766 for "John McCain."

Despite a decreasing percentage of positive coverage for all candidates, Clinton has gained an advantage as the percentage of documents rated as positive fell dramatically for Obama, from 10% on March 18, from 27% on March 12. Positives slipped to 17% from 21% for Clinton, and 20% from 31% for McCain.



March 7-12, 2008

March 13 - 18, 2008

Press Analysis Methodology: Total media coverage includes analysis of more than 6,000 publications. Pennsylvania publications analyzed includes 146 print and Web sites of mainstream media (excluding blogs). Articles were found in the following: Print and Web versions of: Centre Daily Times, Herald Standard, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reading Eagle and The Philadelphia Inquirer; print versions of: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and The Morning Call; and Web sites of: ABC 4, CBS3 Philadelphia, FlipSide, NBC 10, NewsMax.com, Observer-Reporter, Our Town, Phillyburbs.com (Philadelphia), Pittsburgh Channel, Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pa.), Ridgway Record, The Allentown Morning Call, The Citizen's Voice, The Daily Review & Sunday Review, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Times Leader, The Times-Tribune, WJAC TV, York Daily Record, York Sunday News Online and York Weekly Record.

Automated Favorability Methodology: This analysis is of English-language documents only and was generated by software-based analysis which has been shown to be 80% accurate in similar corpora. Favorable and unfavorable ratings are assigned based on the words found in close proximity to a candidate's name. All neutral documents were excluded.

Clinton Wins War of Words (by Volume) on Iraq

Pati Carson

Dow Jones Insight Staff

The war in Iraq was a significant factor in this week’s election coverage. McCain, the candidate who most strongly supports the U.S. presence there, was in Baghdad on a congressional visit ahead of the fifth anniversary of the conflict, but still he did not receive the highest number of mentions on this topic. McCain was discussed in connection with Iraq 573 times, but Clinton was mentioned more often (607 times), as she used a speech in Washington Monday to slam both McCain and Obama (423 mentions) on Iraq.

Pennsylvania Papers Show Leaning toward Clinton

By Glenn Fannick

Dow Jones Insight staff

Following Obama's victory in the Wyoming caucuses on Saturday, the mainstream press coverage on Sunday and Monday showed a tendency to talk more about Obama than about Clinton and McCain. In our survey of more than 6,000 publications for Sunday and Monday, we see 3,506 mentions of Obama, to 3,341 mentions of Clinton, to 2,070 for McCain.

However, in Pennsylvania, the largest yet-to-be-contested primary state, the press still showed a tendency to talk about Clinton more. By looking at the total excerpts (each mention of a candidate's name), we see that there were 149 mentions of "Hillary Clinton", to 131 mentions of "Barack Obama", to 73 for John McCain.

Interesting then, that the press in Pennsylvania -- a state which watchers say could go for Clinton -- seems to be slightly favoring Clinton in how many times they mentioned her name over Obama's.

Methodology: Total media coverage includes analysis of more than 6,000 publications. Pennsylvania publications analyzed includes 146 print and Web sites of mainstream media (excluding blogs). Articles were found in the following: Print and Web versions of: Centre Daily Times, Herald Standard, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reading Eagle and The Philadelphia Inquirer; print versions of: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and The Morning Call; and Web sites of: ABC 4, CBS3 Philadelphia, FlipSide, NBC 10, NewsMax.com, Observer-Reporter, Our Town, Phillyburbs.com (Philadelphia), Pittsburgh Channel, Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pa.), Ridgway Record, The Allentown Morning Call, The Citizen's Voice, The Daily Review & Sunday Review, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Times Leader, The Times-Tribune, WJAC TV, York Daily Record, York Sunday News Online and York Weekly Record.

Language Describing Candidates Moves Negative then More Positive

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight staff

The mainstream media's coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign has inched toward negativity during the past 2 1/2 weeks then swung back toward more positive language after mini-Tuesday.

This 2 1/2-week period started the week before Clinton appeared on Saturday Night Live, spoofing the media's lack of gumption in investigating Obama.

This mini analysis was arrived at by consulting the automated favorability analysis in Dow Jones Insight. The system considered 65,374 press documents and found 26,435 of them to contain either favorable or unfavorable language dominating in reference to a candidate.

Comparitively, across all coverage that was not neutral, we found:

• Week 1: Feb 17. to Feb. 23, Obama's coverage was 24% to Clinton's 22% and McCain's 21%.


• Week 2: Feb. 24 to Mar. 1, the one after SNL and before mini-Tuesday, coverage was overall more unfavorable, with Obama's positive coverage at 16%, Clinton's at 14% and McCain's at 13%.


• Then this (partial) week, Mar. 2 to Mar. 6, including the coverage of the days right before the Ohio-Texas primaries and the immediate aftermath, we see more favorable language emerging. Clinton and Obama were evenly getting 21% favorable language with McCain and his nomination-clinching week moving past them to 24%.
  
  
  
  Methodology: This analysis is of English-language documents only and was generated by software-based analysis which has been shown to be 80% accurate in similar corpora. Favorable and unfavorable ratings are assigned based on the words found in close proximity to a candidate's name. All neutral documents were excluded. The remaining 26,435 documents are those with discernible favorability. The source set excludes social media and press releases and includes global English language newspapers, magazines, broadcast transcripts and newswires.

Economy Gathers Leading Spot for all Candidates

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight staff

Domestic issue coverage, across mainstream and social media and in proximity to the five remaining candidates, continues to show differences.

Biggest one to note: Health care remains big for the Democrats (24% of all mentions) and small for the GOP (9%). The economy is No. 1 for everyone.

The difference in domestic issue coverage between Obama and Clinton is slight, with the concept of "terrorism" and "health care" being the only places where there is noticeable difference. Obama gets more mentions in close proximity to terrorism to Clinton's edge in health care. But the volumes change when you consider the McCain, Huckabee and Paul.

Terrorism continues to be McCain's issue, second only to the economy. Think Huckabee? Think immigration (26% of his coverage to 9% for the next closest candidate).

Methodology: "Close proximity" is defined as about 50 words. The total number of documents for this analysis equals 29,570 from Feb. 26 to March 3, 2008. Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

NAFTA Pops as 'New' Thing to Discuss on Campaign Trail

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight staff


As mini-Tuesday approached there wasn't too much new that was being discussed on the campaign trail. But two concepts seemed to poke their heads above the rest of the noise -- NAFTA and religion. Looking to Dow Jones Insight's discovery technology that finds and counts previously untracked terms, we see today that "NAFTA" and related terms ("Canadian officials", etc.) far and away were the latest issue to gain some traction.

Religion (or, perhaps more accurately, fear-mongering discussions around it) also emerged with discussion around Barack Obama's middle name ("Hussein") and talk of support from Louis Farrakhan, seemingly moving the discussion.

Methodology: The total number of documents analyzed equals 2,946 on March 3, 2008. The number of mentions exceeds the number of documents as many documents include more than one mention of a candidate's name. Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

'Change' is still in the air for Obama

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight staff

Each of the presidential campaigns works hard at branding its candidate. For some time now the concept of "change" has lead the charge as being the word most coveted -- at least by Democrats.

During the past 30 days, the word "change" was found in the context of Omaba 51,776 times to Clinton's 44,046 times.

Clinton is using "experience" to redirect people away from Obama's "change". Clinton has the lead, albeit by a thinner margin, with 31,407 mentions to Obama's 25,025.

The concept of "progess" has not really taken off for either candidate. It was mentioned only 2,527 times for Clinton to Obama's 2,448.

McCain had many fewer mentions, likely because the GOP race has been essentially over for a while, so he has gotten less coverage overall. Therefore, instead of comparing McCain to the Democrats we can look at the word that stuck to him the most. We see "change" here too, perhaps surprisingly, leading over "experience" with 19,818 mentions to 14,964. "Hope" was mentioned 9,810 times and "progress" a scant 1,698.

We might see "hope" increase a bit around McCain in the days going forward as he used the term multiple times in the speech he gave Tuesday night after gaining enough votes to secure the GOP nomination.

Methodology: The total number of documents analyzed equals 19,014 in the period Feb. 3 to March 3, 2008. The number of mentions exceeds the number of documents as many documents include more than one mention of a candidate's name. "Close proximity" is about 50 words from the candidate's name. Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential blogs; and more than 6,000 message boards.

Super Tuesday + Not-So-Super Economy = Soaring Press Coverage for Presidential Hopefuls

By Pati Carson
-- Dow Jones Insight staff
Coverage of all candidates surged in January and February as the economy and financial markets had their troubles and the presidential primary season got under way, with coverage peaking in the days leading up to “Super Tuesday” on February 5.

In late 2007, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vied to position themselves as the candidate most opposed to the war in Iraq, while John McCain, the candidate who most strongly supports the war, actually drew far less coverage on the topic. But after President Bush’s annual State of the Union speech on January 28 proclaiming that “the surge is working,” Obama and Clinton clearly moved away from the topic, and McCain emerged as the candidate most closely associated with Iraq.

As the U.S. economy more or less hummed along in the latter half of 2007, the presidential candidates spent little time discussing it, focusing instead on more contentious issues like Iraq and immigration.
But when the subprime crisis and falling housing prices sparked fears of recession and the financial markets took significant hits in January and February, the candidates all had something to say, especially about Fed rate cuts and tax rebates, and coverage spiked. Governor Huckabee, the only state official among the four mainstream candidates, drew the least coverage.

While we all know the news from the polls is that Barack Obama is on a roll and has taken over the lead in the delegate count, a more subtle switch has also occurred since around Super Tuesday. Obama is leading over Hillary Clinton since then in the total number of media mentions (the individual occurrences of the person's name). Before Super Tuesday, Clinton was most always ahead of Obama. While the number of documents in which each gets mentioned is about the same (essentially, you can't write about one without at least mentioning the other), the number of mentions within those documents has switched. Have the members of the press shifted their collective mindset? Are they subconsciously jumping on the Barack bandwagon?

Which one is not like the others..?


Of the five presidential hopefuls, Ron Paul is by far the least “establishment” – not only does he believe in smaller government, but he’s running a smaller campaign. With less funding, he has focused on generating grassroots support, using the Internet as his chief method of getting the word out. The other four mainstream candidates receive a far higher proportion of their overall article mentions from the mainstream press, but the majority of Paul’s coverage comes from blogs and message boards.

Note: Sources in this analysis include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts; more than 13,000 current awareness news Web sites; 2 million of the most influential bloggers; and more than 6,000 message boards.