’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).