And the Winner Is…

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

If media coverage equals mindshare equals votes – or if any publicity really is good publicity – then the nomination was Obama’s all along, as he easily outpaced Clinton in mentions in both the traditional press (print, online and Web) and the social media (blogs and boards) during the primary period as a whole.

From Super Tuesday on February 5 through Friday, June 6, the last day on which Clinton was officially in the race, Obama received 756,281 total mentions in mainstream press sources, or 52% of all mentions for the two Democrats, compared with 700,704 mentions, or 48% of the total, for Clinton. (McCain, meanwhile, was mentioned just 476,885 times, having spent the past couple of months on the sidelines).

On the blogs and boards, Obama was mentioned 268,916 times, or 57% of the Democrat’s total, compared with Clinton’s 205,805, or 43%. (By comparison, McCain had 160,410).

Methodology: Mainstream press sources included 1,933,870 total mentions in 1,296,597 unique documents identified from more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts and more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites. Social media sources included 635,131 total mentions in 418,234 unique documents found on 2 million of the most influential blogs and more than 6,000 message boards.