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.

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.