28 October 2008

Obama Extends or Holds Onto ‘Headline’ Leads in Several Battlegrounds States – Except Pennsylvania

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

If John McCain is hoping that the national polls are overstating his opponent’s lead and that he’ll get the electoral math to tip his way on the only day that matters, he won’t find too much solace in local press coverage in a handful of battleground states. Because here, as with almost every other way the media coverage is sliced, Barack Obama was ahead in the media race during the past week.

In the period of October 19 to 25 versus the previous week, the Democrat increased his lead in total number of headline mentions in four battleground states – Nevada (by 21 percentage points, on the heels of visits by him and his wife), North Carolina (by 10 points), Florida (4 points) and Missouri (3 points). He lost ground, though, in Colorado (where his lead shrunk by 6 percentage points, on a strong push by McCain there), Ohio (2 points) and Pennsylvania (2 points).

And it is Pennsylvania – where Obama has a comfortable lead in public polls, but where the McCain camp insists its private polls put the state at a dead heat – which appears the closest in the headline race. The week of October 19 to 25 showed a 51%-49% split barely leaning Obama’s way. That is a 2-percentage-point drop there for Obama.

And what are those reporters writing about in Pennsylvania? Like everywhere else, it’s kitchen-table issues, with the economy and taxes in the top two slots. As to how Pennsylvania’s coverage differs, it’s not dramatic, but the data show slight variation. The issue of “experience” shows up in the top 10, which was not the case in the other battleground states when taken as a group.

The everyman message of “Joe the plumber” still resonates in Pennsylvania as in the other battlegrounds, getting mentioned more than the issues of jobs, health care and the financial bailout. International issues, including both wars, did not make the top 10.


Methodology: Sources include selected newspapers, newspaper Web sites and broadcast outlets in each state. The past two weeks were compared and the two periods saw similar number of articles written in each state.

Bush Still Gets Some Press in this Election Frenzy

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The curse of the lame duck president – one who will be losing his power shortly – is well known. But how does that end-point impact the president’s coverage in the media?

The loss of attention for President Bush is starker in the social media landscape than in the traditional media. Dow Jones Insight found that Bush had an 11% share of voice, compared to Obama’s 49% and McCain’s 40%, when counting headline mentions from September 27 to October 26 in approximately 20,000 mainstream news publications and media Web sites. But in blogs, Bush hardly ever made it into the headlines, getting just 2% of all headline mentions of the three. Perhaps not a surprise, but even those sparse mentions are dismal, including such posts as “Sarah Palin Blames George Bush for Problems facing the Republican Campaign” and “Is Palin the new Bush?”

When the president has gotten mentioned in the mainstream media of late, it’s generally been in reference to the economy or the financial sector bailout. For the economy, from September 27 to October 26, Bush received a headline mention a bit less than one-third as often as either McCain or Obama, with 11,762 Bush mentions compared to 31,116 for McCain and 31,106 for Obama. For the bailout, the president saw much more comparable volumes, netting 11,310 headline mentions to McCain’s 15,138 and Obama’s 14,300. But for virtually all other issues, he wasn’t the focus at all.

Methodology: The data come from approximately 20,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 60,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.




No ‘Surprise’ in October as Obama Rolls Along

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The last full month of the 2008 presidential election is nearly over and we have not had the "October surprise" many political analysts have mentioned in hushed tones. Such a tail-wag-dog event, perhaps orchestrated by the White House, would be aimed at giving the Republican nominee a needed boost in the polls.

Instead, the more mundane has been playing out through October, at least as measured by mentions in the mainstream media and the blogosphere.

McCain had a strong September in the media, passing Obama for the first time during the general campaign. However, it was short-lived, with Obama re-emerging as the media darling early in October and expanding his lead every week since.

Meanwhile, Palin, who was greatly responsible for McCain’s rise in media coverage in early September, continues to do much better than Biden – topping him by more than 2 to 1 on most days – but her coverage has remained below that of McCain’s in the weeks following the vice presidential debate on October 2.

Methodology: The data come from approximately 20,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 60,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.

Issues Coverage Hits a Plateau but Obama’s Share of it Does Not

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

With a week to go until Election Day, the volume of mainstream and social media coverage of the two candidates on key election issues has leveled off considerably from the sharp increases we’d seen in our past several analyses, but Barack Obama again widened his lead in terms of the number of issues on which he received higher coverage than John McCain.

In our latest analysis, covering the period September 26 through October 26, Obama achieved an overall coverage advantage on 14 of the 26 issues tracked, while McCain led on just one issue and 11 were categorized as ties, or as having a difference of fewer than six percentage points between the two candidates, according to analysis of 20,000 mainstream media and 2 million social media sources by Dow Jones Insight. Obama’s 14 issues were one more than the 13 he “owned” in our previous analysis covering the 30-day period from September 19 through October 19. McCain’s total represented a decline of three issues from the four on which he had led last time around. Worse yet, two snapshots ago McCain led on nine and a month ago he led on 19, so the downward trend has been quite pronounced; since we created the Issues Tracker in July, McCain had never led on fewer than three issues, even when Obama was on his swing through the Middle East and Europe. The 11 ties in the latest analysis were two more than the previous period’s nine.

Of the individual issues that changed hands, Obama added taxes and immigration to his side of the ledger, both of which had previously been too close to call, while Israel moved from the Obama side to a tie, resulting in the net gain of one issue for the Democrat. McCain led on just North Korea this time, giving up his former coverage advantages on the economy, the housing slump and Social Security, all three of which are now ties.

In terms of total issues-related volume, for the period September 26 through October 26 there were 1,666,011 mentions of the candidates in proximity to one or more of the 26 issues in all tracked sources. That represented an increase of 3.5% over the 1,609,083 issues-related mentions in the previous rolling 30-day period. The volume of issues-oriented coverage has leveled off after significant rises in several of our previous analyses, and the movement of issues up and down in the rankings was also minimal. The only move of more than one spot was bailout, which fell from second place to fourth, not so much because the economic crisis is being discussed less but because it has taken on new forms beyond the original bailout bill voted down by, and then passed by, Congress. But even with the small changes in total volume and relative importance of the issues, the Obama campaign clearly managed to steer the focus further from McCain and toward its candidate.

When we group the issues by type, we again see modest changes. Discussion of the various issues related to the economic crisis made up 46% of the total this time around, down a point from 47% in our last analysis, while the percentage of talk regarding non-economic domestic issues, like education and same-sex marriage, also dipped a bit, to 16% from 17%. On the rise, if only slightly, was the group of candidate-specific issues (such as faith and race), which accounted for 24% of the discussion, up from 23%, while issues related to the wars and the Middle East stayed level at 13% of the total.



Methodology: This analysis looks at 26 selected issues that occurred within 50 words of at least one of the candidates’ names during the period of September 26 to October 26, 2008. To demonstrate change in “ownership” of issues, these data were compared with the period of September 19 to October 19. We opted to take a 30-day snapshot approximately every two weeks to flatten out any spikes in data that could be attributed to a single-day anomaly in the data. The data come from approximately 20,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 60,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.


23 October 2008

Obama Coverage Trending Upward as McCain’s Remains Flat

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The trend lines of daily headline coverage of the two candidates for September 1 through October 20 show a very clear story – McCain’s gains in September have disappeared and as each day progresses through October Obama widens the gap.

Headline mentions, as we’ve written before, are a telling indicator of what the media and bloggers think the main focus of the events of the day should be.

Overlaying a linear trend line atop these daily counts, as shown here, shows more clearly the direction the volume counts are moving.

The three most recent spikes in coverage, just following September 26, October 7 and October 15, are a result of more coverage in the days after the three presidential debates. After the first debate, McCain picked up many more headline mentions than Obama. But after the other two debates, including the October 15 event, which many say was McCain’s strongest showing, more headlines were written about Obama than McCain. And in the days since, the gap has been growing.

Methodology: Mainstream press sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts and more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites. Social media sources include 2 million of the most influential blogs and more than 60,000 message boards.

For a Few Short Days It Was All About ‘Joe the Plumber’ in the Blogs

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

We thought it would take a lot to kick “change” out of the No. 1 slot of the most used hot-button term this election. But we would not have predicted a plumber would seal the deal. The sudden rise of “Joe the Plumber,” the nation’s newly crowned everyman who challenged Obama at one of his rallies and who the McCain camp has raised to symbol status, burst on the scene after the third debate and topped “change” in mentions in the social media during the period October 13 to October 19.

In the same period, “Joe” climbed to No. 2 in the mainstream media.

In both the press and in social media, Joe saw a large burst and a noticeable decline in the days that followed the debate. Daily volumes of “Joe” are running at about 33% what they were on the day after the debate. So this is a drop, but Joe does still have legs.

Meanwhile Obama’s attempt to label McCain “erratic” didn’t quite take off in the social media space. It settles into the fifth slot this week, never making it to the lofty heights of the once mighty “elitism,” which is now at No. 9.

And while “electability” has slipped out of the top 10 in social media, its sister, “experience,” holds onto the forth slot this week. Experience may be two steps above “celebrity” but it’s no “hope,” which is at No. 3 this week.

Obama’s ‘Headline Lead’ Larger Than Average in Colorado, Ohio and Florida

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The national split of headline mentions in the most recent weekly analysis shows 54% of headline mentions for Obama and 46% for McCain. The breakdown in Red and Blue states is about the same, as it is in the Gray States when taken as a whole.

So this week we decided to focus not on the Gray States as whole but specifically on some that will likely matter most. Here we see some splits wider than the national split. In a few states, Obama’s lead is greater, and in a few it’s less. For example, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio and Florida all show Obama leads that are greater than his lead at the national level, while North Carolina and Nevada show closer races – gaps of about four percentage points.

Colorado has voted Republican three times in the past four, and now, with its influx of first-generation Hispanic voters, it becomes a state both sides think they can win. Closely watched Florida, where Obama is outspending McCain 4-1 of late according to CNN, has a 55%-45% breakdown in the most recent period. Perennial battleground Ohio and Missouri, with its surge in newly registered African American voters, are both at 57%-43% for Obama. And Nevada, with many newly registered Democrats, has Obama up a few points in the polls and a close 53%-48% split. North Carolina, also at 53%-48%, has been solidly Republican for much of the past several decades but is a dead heat in the polls.

While there is no consensus on exactly how to determine if a state is a “battleground,” one thing is generally agreed upon: the election will likely tip to the candidate who wins in most of these key states. Over the past several months, Dow Jones Insight has analyzed the nation along red, blue and gray lines, strictly defining a Red State as one that has gone for the GOP four elections in a row, a Blue State as one that’s gone Democratic four in a row and a Gray State as one that has split. Our analysis includes television and print news media based in those states.

During most weeks, Red and Blue have been at most only a few points apart. And the most recent week, October 13 to October 19, was no different. Obama led in the count of headline mentions in both Red States (53%-47%) and Blue States (54%-46%). Perhaps this shows the press is not being influenced by the voting record of its readership. Or perhaps it underscores the argument that the country is more purple than it is two crisp camps.
Blue States are defined as those that were carried by the Democrats in all four of the most recent presidential elections: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Red States are defined as those that were carried by the GOP in all four of the most recent presidential elections: Alaska, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.

22 October 2008

The Issues-Coverage Pendulum Continues to Swing Back Toward Obama

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

With recent polls showing a widening lead for Barack Obama with less than two weeks to go before Election Day, the Democratic candidate continues to generate more coverage in the press and social media on key election issues, a trend he began several weeks back after briefly ceding the lead to McCain in the post-Palin coverage storm.

In the most recent rolling-30-day period from September 19 through October 19, Obama achieved an overall coverage advantage on 13 issues, compared with the 10 he dominated in our previous analysis covering September 12 through October 12, according to analysis of 20,000 mainstream media and 2 million social media sources by Dow Jones Insight. Of those, Obama now has a commanding lead (one greater than 15 points) on seven, including the bailout, faith, terrorism, jobs, abortion, Israel and fuel prices.

John McCain had a leading share on just four issues in the latest analysis, down from nine last time around, and he did not have a commanding lead on any issue. This shift reflects, in part, the declining share of overall election media coverage for McCain. The number of issues in which the coverage advantage was too close to call, or those with a difference of less than six percentage points between the two candidates, totaled nine, compared with seven last time.

In our previous analysis, Obama had the lead on 10 issues. In the ensuing seven days, he’s added four and lost one, resulting in 13 total. The issues he added were: terrorism, jobs and Israel, which were all formerly ties, and fuel prices, which had been McCain’s. In our last analysis, McCain had the lead in nine issues. Over the next seven days, he’s added one and lost six, resulting in four total issues for the most recent period. He added North Korea, which had been too close to call, and lost health care, Iran, energy, environment, and stem cell research, all of which are now ties. Fuel prices, meanwhile, went from McCain to Obama.

For the period September 19 through October 19, there were a total of 1,609,083 mentions of the candidates in proximity to one or more of the 26 issues in all tracked sources. That represented an increase of 15% over the 1,395,917 issues-related mentions in the previous rolling 30-day period. While the volume of issues-related coverage was up significantly, there was little change in the relative coverage of the issues themselves, as no issue went up or down more than one spot in the rankings. What changed, obviously, was which candidate was the focus of that coverage.

Of the issues-oriented mentions, 47% were related to the economic crisis, the same ratio as in our last analysis, while 23% were related to the candidates themselves (fundraising, faith and race), up one percentage point from the previous analysis. Non-economic domestic issues (e.g., education) remained at 17% and issues related to the wars and the Middle East dropped one percentage point to 14%.

Methodology: This analysis looks at 26 selected issues that occurred within 50 words of at least one of the candidates’ names during the period of August 15 to September 15, 2008. To demonstrate change in “ownership” of issues, these data were compared with the period of August 1 to September 1. We opted to take a 30-day snapshot approximately every two weeks to flatten out any spikes in data that could be attributed to a single-day anomaly in the data. The data come from approximately 19,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 60,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.

14 October 2008

Coverage of the Economy Outpaces All Other Issues Since Super Tuesday

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

Conventional wisdom of late has held that John McCain was performing best when foreign policy issues such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and terrorism were at the forefront of the presidential campaign, and that now that the economy and financial crisis are dominating the discussion, his weaknesses are causing him to fall behind in the polls.

While it is true that election coverage pertaining to the economy is currently at its peak and that McCain is now trailing Obama significantly in several national polls, analysis of coverage in 20,000 mainstream sources tracked by Dow Jones Insight reveals that the economy has, in fact, been the top election issue at almost every step of the way since Super Tuesday, falling behind other issues on only a handful of occasions. The related issue of taxes has also outpaced foreign policy issues much of the time. So attributing McCain’s recent slide to a shift in press coverage toward the economy may not be quite accurate, since the emphasis has been there all along.

For the eight months beginning on Super Tuesday, February 5, the economy and/or taxes drew the highest coverage in every week except in mid- to late-May, when McCain and Obama stepped up their dispute over whether or not to talk with Iran, and in late July when Obama made his trip to the Middle East.

In terms of volume, the economy drew 109,356 mentions in mainstream press sources for the entire eight-month period, compared with 100,943 combined mentions of the four tracked issues related to the Middle East that drew the most coverage – Iraq (23,677), Iran (20,044), Afghanistan (21,279) and terrorism (35,943). Meanwhile, taxes generated 67,387 total mentions in the tracked timeframe.

The issue of the economy alone exceeded the total combined mentions of the four Middle East issues in five of the eight months. When the economy is combined with taxes, the two issues exceeded the four foreign-policy topics in six of the eight months, with May and July again being the exceptions.

The week of July 14 saw the highest volume of Afghanistan coverage, with 5,518 mentions, while in the same week terrorism was mentioned 3,170 times. During the week of May 19, Iran was mentioned 1,461 times, compared to an unusually low 937 for the economy, and during the week of May 12, terrorism received 1,882 mentions while Iran was mentioned 1,466 times, both significantly outstripping the economy (1,049).

Methodology: Sources analyzed include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts. The nominees subject group includes McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden.

Newly Discovered Phrases Confirm Campaigns’ Shift Toward the Personal

By Dow Jones Insight Staff


With McCain’s post-convention and post-Palin bounce in the polls essentially eliminated by the financial crisis, the McCain team has decided to focus instead on issues related to Obama’s background and character, and the Obama team has responded with some personal attacks of its own.

Over the past seven days, the majority of terms newly discovered by Dow Jones Insight as being used frequently in conjunction with McCain’s and Obama’s names involve former Weather Underground member William Ayers, and McCain’s and Palin’s various comments linking Ayers with Obama, as well as Obama’s effort to remind voters of McCain’s association with the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Of the 10 most common terms discovered in proximity to Obama’s name in all tracked sources, four involve Ayers: “Ayers” was mentioned 5,075 times, “Bill Ayers” 4,215 times, “William Ayers” 3,157 times and “Weather” 1,752 times, for a total of 14,199 Ayers-related mentions. Other terms or phrases making the Obama list include “Kenya,” with 1,543 mentions, and “Muslim,” with 1,301, both reflecting attempts (by writers, if not necessarily by McCain) to portray Obama as less American than McCain as well as non-Christian, and “political career” (1,096), a term found in a very widely distributed Associated Press article about Obama fundraiser and real-estate developer Tony Rezko. Obama was also mentioned frequently with the term “Keating” (893), as his campaign fired back with some negative associations for McCain.

Newly discovered terms appearing in relation to McCain largely reflected coverage of his campaign’s efforts to tie Obama to Ayers as well as the Obama team’s subsequent efforts to remind voters of McCain’s history with the savings and loan crisis.

Of the 10 most common terms discovered in proximity to McCain’s name over the past seven days, three involve the Keating scandal – “Keating” (with 2,523 mentions), “Keating Five” (with 1,600) and “Charles Keating” (with 1,331) – while three involved Ayers – “Ayers” (with 1,813), “Bill Ayers” (with 1,656) and “William Ayers” (with 1,233).


Methodology: “Discovered” terms include commonly identified phrases not already tracked as subjects in the Dow Jones Insight presidential election platform. Mainstream press sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts and more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites. Social media sources include 2 million of the most influential blogs and more than 60,000 message boards.

Obama Wins Back Six Issues in Latest Rolling 30 Days, Edging McCain

By Dow Jones Insight Staff


In our previous analysis covering the period September 8 through October 8, half of the 26 major issues tracked by Dow Jones Insight had become too close to call, and of the other half, McCain had outpaced Obama by 9 to 4 in terms of share of coverage on each issue. Still, we saw this as indicating that the coverage was moving to parity, with most topics being about half and half. This week brought a different kind of parity, however, with the two candidates more or less splitting ownership of the issues down the middle, leaving fewer issues with no clear coverage leader. On the whole, though, the results show the coverage pendulum swinging back toward Obama, where it had been for much of the campaign season prior to the Palin and convention bump in September.

For the 30-day period from September 12 through October 12, Obama received higher coverage on 10 issues to McCain’s 9. The number of issues that were “ties” fell to seven from 13. Obama was responsible for most of the shift, gaining the coverage lead in six categories (bailout, faith, abortion, immigration and same-sex marriage, all formerly too close to call, plus Nafta, which McCain had won last time around). McCain stayed at nine, losing Nafta but adding Iran, which was formerly a tie.

Only a few of the issues themselves saw significant increases in overall coverage, relative to the other issues (defined as moving up or down the list by more than one spot). Those included taxes, which advanced two spots, and Iran, which climbed three. Education and abortion each fell two places.

Coverage volume related to the issues has leveled off a bit since our last snapshot, after rising strongly in recent weeks. The candidates’ names occurred in conjunction with one or more of the 26 tracked issues 1,395,917 times in the past 30 days in the nearly 20,000 mainstream media and 2 million social media sources analyzed, up slightly from 1,394,277 in the previous 30-day period. Of those issues-related mentions, 47% were related to the economic crisis (up 3 percentage points from last time) and 22% to the candidates themselves (down 1 percentage point), while non-economic domestic issues fell one point to 17% and issues related to the wars and the Middle East stayed the same, at 14% (figures in the previous period don’t total 100% due to rounding).


Methodology: This analysis looks at 26 selected issues that occurred within 50 words of at least one of the candidates’ names during the period of September 12 to October 12, 2008. To demonstrate change in “ownership” of issues, these data were compared with the period of September 8 to October 8. We opted to take a 30-day snapshot approximately every two weeks to flatten out any spikes in data that could be attributed to a single-day anomaly in the data. The data come from approximately 20,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 60,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.

09 October 2008

McCain’s Hold on the ‘Issue-Lead’ Fades Quickly

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The early part of the post-primary race was all Obama. He dominated media coverage no matter how the data were sliced. Then McCain made a move in late summer, and for a few weeks in September McCain was commanding more attention across the social and mainstream media landscape on an issue-by-issue basis. But that lead proved tenuous, as this week’s analysis by Dow Jones Insight shows media coverage of half of the issues is now split evenly.

Last week McCain had turned the board nearly all red as the press and bloggers were mentioning his name in close proximity to the major issues more often than they were Obama’s. But this week we see a much grayer view. The top issues on which McCain is still getting more ink (and pixels) are the economy, health care, energy, the environment and the housing slump. And Obama is still holding onto fundraising (which is not an issue a candidate necessarily wants press on) and has taken back education. But other key issues – the financial bailout (a newly added issue for this analysis), taxes, terrorism, Iraq, Israel and immigration – are even.

As to which issue is the most discussed overall, there is little surprise that the economy is still on top this week and its sister issues (the bailout, taxes and jobs) are all in the top 10. For much of the campaign we lamented the volume of press given to what some might call the non-policy issues of the candidates’ races, the pastors they associate with, their faiths and how much money they’ve raised. It seems it took a major financial crisis to sharpen the focus.

In the most recent 30-day snapshot (the previous snapshot was sampled seven days ago) the issues that have gained ground are the financial bailout, jobs, Afghanistan and Iran, while those that fell the most in the rankings were abortion (which had jumped after Palin was announced) and the environment.

As the election nears, coverage volume continues to rise. One of the candidate’s names occurred along with one or more of the 26 tracked issues 1.4 million times in the past 30 days in the nearly 20,000 mainstream media and 2 million social media sources analyzed. Of that, a full 44% were related to the economic state of affairs the nation finds itself in. As for the rest, 23% were related to the candidates directly (fundraising, faith and race), 18% to non-economic domestic issues (e.g., education), and 14% were related to the wars and the Middle East.

Methodology: This analysis looks at 25 selected issues that occurred within 50 words of at least one of the candidates’ names during the period of August 15 to September 15, 2008. To demonstrate change in “ownership” of issues, these data were compared with the period of August 1 to September 1. We opted to take a 30-day snapshot approximately every two weeks to flatten out any spikes in data that could be attributed to a single-day anomaly in the data. The data come from approximately 19,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 60,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.

Local Media Giving Equal Coverage – Except in the Headlines

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

For the first time since the 2008 presidential campaign became a two-man race, there is almost exact parity between the individual mentions of Obama and McCain when analyzing coverage in local print and broadcast media in three groups of states -- Red States, Blue States and Swing States.

However, the more interesting numbers are found, as we have reported before, when analyzing only headline mentions. In the seven-day period from September 30 to October 7, Dow Jones Insight identified approximately 22,000 headline-mentions of one or the other candidate.

By this measure, Obama is having more impact in local mainstream press than is McCain. Headlines can be seen as a proxy for what the press thinks is most important and therefore of what consumers of the media will consciously or subconsciously digest most easily. In the current analysis, we see a greater disparity in the Red States (Obama at 56% to McCain at 44%) than we do in the Blue States (Obama leading 53% to 47%). In the Swing States Obama’s lead is 54% to 46%.

Overall, when factoring in blogs, message boards, and national and international English-language media, coverage is leaning slightly toward McCain in the past seven days (51%-49%) but that’s coming mostly from a two-percentage-point difference in social media. With social media removed the breakdown is nearly dead-even.

Internationally, the English-language mainstream media is not evenly split. Obama leads in Europe, Africa and South America, and McCain has a razor-thin lead in the Pacific Rim.

Blue States are defined as those that were carried by the Democrats in all four of the most recent presidential elections: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Red States are defined as those that were carried by the GOP in all four of the most recent presidential elections: Alaska, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.

Change is Coming, but Who is the ‘Change’ Candidate?

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

In a year where the sitting president has the lowest approval rating of any in history, it is no shock that each candidate wants to embrace change. But which one has convinced the press that he is the man who stands for change?

It would seem the Republican might have the harder road here, and that showed early on with Obama using the term frequently and the press picking up on it.

But that changed the week of September 1 when McCain passed Obama in mentions of the word. He’d made a concerted effort to take back the word as he exclaimed during his acceptance speech at the GOP convention: "Let me just offer an advance warning to the old big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second crowd: Change is coming. Change is coming."

This has been one of the mantras of his campaign during September, but perhaps it will not be possible for a Republican nominee to break free of Bush’s legacy as McCain’s September “change” charge seems to be wearing off. By the week of September 8 the candidates had equal share of the precious word and by the weeks of September 15 and 22, it seemed to be moving back to the Democrat.

Methodology: Mainstream press sources include more than 6,000 newspapers, wires, magazines, radio and TV transcripts and more than 13,000 current-awareness news Web sites. Social media sources include 2 million of the most influential blogs and more than 60,000 message boards.