Economy Gains Even More Attention Around President-Elect Obama, While ‘15 Minutes’ Are Over for ‘Joe’

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The media conversation around Barack Obama not surprisingly changed in the week following Election Day. During the period of November 5 to 11, the coverage of “taxes” took a nosedive in the mainstream media, going from approximately 16,000 mentions for Obama in the week before Election Day to 6,000 the week after. Other issues that lost traction were abortion and immigration – each losing about one-third of their volume in a week.

But the economy and the financial bailout as well as the environment were being talked about even more than before the election.

International issues gaining coverage in the context of the president-elect included Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Israel, while Iraq showed no change from the week before Election Day.

As expected, Obama’s mainstream media coverage on the whole increased dramatically in the week following Election Day. For all the coverage he and McCain received in the weeks and months leading up to the presidential election, the week after the election proved to be even more focused on the new president. Media mentions of Obama peaked during the week of November 5 to 11 (185,000 mentions of Obama coming from Dow Jones Insight’s 20,000 tracked publications and Web sites.) In fact, that week’s tally was double that of the highest previous week (August 25 to 31, when he received 94,000 mentions). On average, the post-election-week mentions of Obama were about four times the average of all weeks since Super Tuesday.

For obvious reasons, Obama received more than double the mainstream media mentions of McCain in the week of November 5 to 11 (185,000 to 78,000). And while President Bush had lost the already-small “presidential mindshare” in the two weeks before the election – dropping from an early autumn average of 6,800 mentions a week to 3,000 in the last two weeks of October – he gained it back in the week after the election, rising to 6,900 mentions.

Election Day perhaps marked the beginning of the end of “Joe the Plumber’s” 15 minutes of fame. Coverage of this symbol of what McCain said was wrong with Obama’s tax plan fell from a high of about 9,988 mentions in the week of October 15 to 21, when Joe first came on the scene, to 680 during the post-Election Day week of November 5 to 11.

It should be noted, however, that “hope” and “change,” two of Obama’s calling cards, remain on an upward path, with their post-election numbers higher than the highs before November 4. “Change” alone went from 10,000 mentions two weeks before the election to 25,000 in the week after the election.

In the weeks and months leading up to Election Day much of the coverage was about the economy in one way or another. In our final pre Election Day analysis, 46% of all issues-related coverage of the candidates involved the economy, with coverage of other domestic issues (16%), candidate-specific issues (24%) and the wars (13%) running far behind.

But looking at Obama coverage only in the week before and the week after the election, the percentages and rankings shift in small but telling ways. Talk of the economic crisis and the non-economic domestic issues, when taken as a group, slipped slightly from week to week while foreign policy-related issues – topics on which Obama had both supporters and vociferous critics – jumped and topics related to Obama as a candidate (such as faith and fundraising) fell.

Specifically, in the week before the election, issues surrounding the economic crisis represented 43% of the total Obama issues-related coverage, but that fell to 42% in the week following. Domestic issues, meanwhile, represented 22% of the total before the election and a slightly lower 21% after, despite a surge in coverage of Obama in conjunction with same-sex marriage as the media discussed whether Obama’s high turnout in California had impacted the results of that state’s public question on same-sex marriage. The surge in that issue nearly offset large declines in Obama-related coverage on health care, abortion, immigration and Social Security.

War and foreign-policy issues taken as a group rose from 15% of the total before the election to 19% after the election, largely reflecting increased talk of Obama in conjunction with Afghanistan and Iraq. Candidate-specific issues fell from 20% before Nov. 4 to 18% after, as talk of fundraising in particular fell off dramatically.

Methodology: This analysis looks at 25 selected issues that occurred within 50 words of Barack Obama’s name during the periods of October 29 to November 4 and November 5 to November 11. Green highlight indicates those that moved significantly higher in rank from week 1 to week 2; red highlights those that fell significantly over the same period. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Higher Overall Coverage for McCain Translates to Wins on Additional Issues

Dow Jones Insight Staff

Media coverage of the campaign issues being tracked by Dow Jones Insight surged again in the most recent rolling 30-day period, as the trend in issues ownership toward “red” reflected the overall increase in McCain-related coverage.

In the period August 15 – September 15, McCain had a note-worthy edge (for our purposes, six percentage points or greater) in 17 of the 25 issues being tracked, up from six in our previous analysis. Among the issues he added were the economy, taxes, terrorism, health care and abortion (each with a split of 54% for McCain to 46% for Obama), as well as energy (59% to 41%) and the environment (56% to 44%). Obama owned just five issues, down from seven last time out, and added no new issues. Still on the Obama side of the issues ledger were faith, race, Israel, gun control and Nafta. The two on which he lost the lead were health care, which went to McCain, and fundraising, which was too close to call (note that the parameters of this analysis differ from the fundraising discussion above in both time period and number of candidates considered).

Education moved up five spots from our last analysis, though the split between candidates was fairly even. Both had made education a key element of their acceptance speeches and recent stump speeches, and both had controversies arise over sex education, or at least claims by the other side about their record on sex education. The issue of terrorism also rose three places, reflecting numerous convention speeches as well as the seventh anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. Energy and fuel prices fell back in the rankings, to ninth and 16th positions from fifth and 11th, respectively, as gas prices at the pump eased a bit from their July highs (before spiking briefly near the end of the tracked period due to Hurricane Ike); both issues went from being too close to call last time around to being dominated by McCain.

Total issues-based coverage was up 22% in the latest timeframe, reaching 1,137,582 mentions of all 25 issues compared with 934,408.


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.

McCain Regains Lead on Foreign-Policy Issues as Candidates’ Issues Coverage Rebounds

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

Media coverage of the issues being tracked by Dow Jones Insight surged in the latest rolling one-month period as a result of the two parties’ nominating conventions and vice presidential picks, but the increase seems to have helped McCain more, as he regained the lead on several foreign-policy issues that Obama had won with his trip to the Middle East and Europe earlier this summer, and drew closer on several other issues.

For the period August 1 – September 1, the 25 tracked issues were discussed a total of 934,408 times, up 29% from 724,799 in the previous rolling one-month span.

McCain took leading shares on Iraq (55%), Afghanistan (53%) and Iran (56%), which were led by Obama in our previous analysis, as well as on North Korea (55%), which had formerly been too close to call. He gained ground in terms of coverage on the economy, abortion, terrorism, education, immigration and the housing slump, all of which had been led by Obama in our last analysis and are now too close to call. The only issue on which McCain lost ground to Obama is same-sex marriage, which is now a statistical tie.

A few issues saw significant movement in the latest period. Abortion moved up from 17 to 6, reflecting several developments, including discussion of the topic by both candidates at a forum in August, controversy over Obama’s voting history in Illinois, statements of support in the Democratic party platform and in Obama’s acceptance speech at the convention, and discussions of Palin’s stance on abortion. Health care also rose significantly, to 8th place from 15th in our last analysis, helped largely by several Democratic convention speeches.

Obama Takes Command of Five More Issues

Dow Jones Insight Staff

In our previous analysis, we found that Obama was in the lead in media coverage on 10 of the 25 key election issues being tracked in mainstream and social media by Dow Jones Insight, a rather impressive performance. But in the latest period, from July 17 to August 17, he demonstrated a clear lead on 15 of the 25 issues, wresting one away from McCain and breaking formerly statistical ties in four others.

The five new issues on which Obama is now clearly ahead of McCain include the economy, health care, abortion, the housing slump and Nafta. The housing slump issue was formerly led by McCain, while the other four issues had been too close to call, defined as those that differ by six or fewer percentage points. While Obama’s lead in media coverage in general (see the next post for more detail) would certainly explain his lead on many issues, it is still surprising that his advantage on issues is almost across-the-board.

But perhaps it isn’t as bad as it seems for McCain. While he holds clear leads on only three issues, and all three of those are among the six least-covered issues, he is tied with Obama (i.e., too close to call) on six of the 14 most-covered issues. Among them are key domestic issues like energy, taxes, fuel prices and the environment. Given that he has lagged Obama in total media mentions since we began tracking election-related media coverage, it is a pretty fair achievement that he’s maintaining parity on so many issues.

Of the remaining eight of the top 14 most covered issues, Obama’s tour of the Middle East and Europe in late July helped him take the lead on three – Afghanistan, Israel and Iran. But now that several weeks have passed since that trip, all three of those issues have fallen in the rankings compared to our previous report, and they could be up for grabs once that time period falls outside our analysis.

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 July 17 to August 17, 2008. To demonstrate change in “ownership” of issues, these data were compared with the period of July 6 to August 6. 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 50,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.

Obama Still Leading Big Picture Media Race Despite Noise to the Contrary

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

While there has been much talk by pundits about how McCain has been catching up with Obama in certain areas of media coverage as well as in the polls, the Dow Jones Insight analysis of the overall media landscape shows Obama still dominating mainstream and social media coverage of most issues.

Looking at the period of July 6 to August 6, 2008, our analysis shows that Obama continues to receive more coverage than McCain in 10 of the 25 issues being tracked*. McCain leads in four of the 25. The other 11 are too close to call. But perhaps more importantly, the issues Obama “owns” are also among the most discussed (6 of the top 10 are his; the other four are ties) while the four in which McCain leads are in the bottom seven slots.

Of the 11 issues that are too close to call – defined as those that differ by six or fewer percentage points – two significant issues (energy and fuel prices) were previously McCain’s while the other four (health care, abortion, Nafta and North Korea) were Obama’s during the period of June 20 to July 20. Energy is one of Obama’s two stated areas of focus for the week (the other being the economy) and while he has cut into McCain’s lead on energy, coverage of the economy is still pretty much even.

Obama’s lead holds when the data are sliced various ways, as well. In the period of July 30 to August 6, he has more coverage of domestic issues both on blogs and in the press; of international issues both on blogs and in the press; of wedge issues; more coverage in local press in the Red States, Blue States and the Swing States; and he still leads in the all-important “headline mentions” race.

However, the talk shows and pundits are talking about McCain catching up. So what are they seeing? It is possible to conclude that growth in Obama’s lead is slowing. When analyzing the number of daily mentions over the period of July 6 to August 6, we see that the trend lines for both candidates are rising more or less in tandem. But in the weeks before July 6, Obama’s upward trend was much steeper than McCain’s. In other words, Obama does seem to be gathering more mentions each day at a slower rate than before.

* 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 July 6 to August 6, 2008. To demonstrate change in “ownership” of issues, these data were compared with the period of June 20 to July 20. 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 18,000 English-language mainstream media print and Web sources, more than 50,000 English-language message boards and 2 million blogs.

Fuel Prices, Jobs Cuts and Housing Slumps – Oh, My

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

With the current state of the economy a hot topic, we have begun tracking several new issues that are playing key roles in the overall economic picture – namely fuel prices, the housing market and the jobs situation. Considering the direness of the discussion around these topics in some corners of the media, it appears that on the whole, the press and bloggers are talking about them in relation to the candidates somewhat less than we’d have expected. As always, this may or may not be a reflection of where the candidates want to take the conversation, but it shows the amount of attention the media and bloggers are giving the issues as they cover the candidates.

Of the 24 key domestic and international issues currently tracked by Dow Jones Insight, only one of the new topics – fuel prices – cracked the top 10. The issue was mentioned in the context of either candidate 27,443 times in all tracked sources (mainstream and social media) during the period June 20 – July 20, making it the eighth-most-discussed issue. The topic of jobs was referenced 22,335 times, ranking it 11th, while the state of the housing market came up a surprisingly low 5,578 times, putting it way down the list in the 21st spot. The issue of the economy as a whole, however, rose to the top spot among all issues, potentially offering some proof that politicians prefer to talk in generalities rather than offer specific plans.

We will update this table regularly to provide an at-a-glance view of how coverage of the issues fluctuates over the course of the campaign.

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.