McCain, Obama Back on Top as Candidates Address Economy and Debate Takes Place as Scheduled; Palin Falls, Biden Stays Low

Dow Jones Insight Staff

As we reported in our previous analysis, by September 13 Sarah Palin’s coverage lead over the other three nominees was shrinking but still significant. In our latest trend analysis of mainstream and social media sources tracked by Dow Jones Insight, covering the period August 27 through September 27, that downward trend has for the most part continued while coverage of the two presidential candidates has risen.

As the week of September 15 unfolded – with Lehman Brothers declaring bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch being taken over by Bank of America, and panic over the financial markets escalating – the two presidential nominees ultimately re-emerged as the coverage leaders as they attempted to help lead the country out of crisis. Meanwhile, Palin’s coverage remained flat for most of that week but then resumed its overall downward trajectory as the McCain team reportedly moved to limit media access. Coverage of Democratic rival Joe Biden continued to register barely a blip.

The two presidential candidates’ coverage continued to increase the following week, in particular after the 24th when McCain announced plans to suspend his campaign, skip the debate, return to Washington and focus on helping solve the financial crisis. It rose further on the 25th as the Obama team accused McCain of grandstanding, and again on the 26th, as the debate was eventually held.

Most notably, toward the end of the tracked period Palin’s coverage appeared to be dropping to levels approaching that of Biden. The coverage peak she received on September 12, the day after her interview by ABC’s Charlie Gibson, gave way to a fairly steady decline. (Note that all candidates received lower coverage on September 6-7, 13-14, and 20-21, all of which were weekends.) Her interview with Katie Couric, broadcast on the 24th and 25th and considered by some to have been a poor showing by Palin, generated a barely perceptible bump in coverage. Biden, meanwhile, saw only the tiniest of coverage increases on the 23rd in the wake of his erroneous statements regarding the Great Depression and President Roosevelt. So whether by the design of their respective campaigns or by the happenstance of the worst economic crisis in decades, the media’s spotlight appears to be shining not all that brightly on the two candidates for vice president.


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.

Economy Moves to Top Spot Among Tracked Issues as Overall Issues Coverage Surges

Dow Jones Insight Staff

It was a busy month in terms of media coverage of key election issues, as total issues-oriented mentions rose 21% to 1,377,984, compared to 1,137,582 mentions in the previous rolling month, which itself had represented a 22% jump from the preceding rolling timeframe.

The economy, as expected, was the most covered issue in the latest rolling one-month period tracked by Dow Jones Insight, moving up two spots from the previous period. A related issue on the housing slump also advanced, rising three slots to 19 from 22.
Among the issues changing hands were education and jobs, both of which went from being too close to call to going to McCain’s side of the ledger. Obama took back the issue of fundraising, which he’d lost to a tie last time around, but he lost both faith and Israel, now too close to call.

In total, Obama leads on four issues and McCain on 19, while two are currently too close to call.

And the Winner Is… Palin?

Dow Jones Insight Staff

In the coverage race at least, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin continues to hold the lead, according to analysis of mainstream and social media sources tracked by Dow Jones Insight.

While she had virtually zero coverage in the days prior to her August 29th unveiling as the GOP vice presidential nominee, in the period from August 30 through September 13 she led her own running mate, John McCain, on all but two days – though his coverage totals clearly received a boost from her too – while her coverage exceeded that of Democratic nominee Barack Obama on all days in the period and left vice presidential rival Joe Biden far behind.

Palin ceded the coverage lead to McCain on August 31, the day before the Republican convention was scheduled to begin, while McCain defended the decision to pick Palin, as well as on September 11, the seventh anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.

The coverage gap between Palin and the other candidates was at its widest on September 4, the final night of the Republican convention. It has shrunk somewhat since then as coverage of all four candidates eased heading into the weekend, but remained a significant edge.


When considering the two presidential candidates only during the same time period (August 30-September 13), McCain had 179,004 total mentions in all tracked media sources, or a 55% share, to Obama’s 148,000 mentions, or 45% share.

McCain also led in terms of headline mentions in mainstream press, with 21,995 mentions, or 54%, to Obama’s 18,769, or 46%, while in social media sources (blogs and boards) Obama had 33,120 headline mentions to McCain’s 32,900, for a 50-50 split.

Methodology: All charts and figures above reflect mentions of the candidates in both mainstream and social media sources. 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.

Palin May Have Stolen the Show in Minnesota, but Obama Still Pulled in Higher Convention Coverage

Dow Jones Insight Staff

While the selection of Palin has shifted the spotlight toward the Republicans over the past few weeks, when we analyze mainstream media coverage of both candidates around the time of their respective conventions, Obama still comes out ahead.

We looked at the four scheduled days of each convention plus the preview day before and the wrap-up day afterward – or August 24-29 for the Democrats and August 31-September 5 for the Republicans. The Democratic convention time period saw 91,395 total mentions of both candidates, 14% more coverage than the 80,250 total mentions in the days surrounding the hurricane-shortened Republican convention.

While the higher overall total is understandable given that the Democratic convention was a four-day event compared with three days for the GOP, Obama had a more dominant share of the conversation during his convention than McCain had during his. Specifically, Obama had 54,624 mentions, or a 60% share, around the time of the Democratic convention, compared to McCain’s 36,771 mentions, or 40%, at that time. In the days surrounding the Republican convention, McCain received 45,448 mentions, for a 57% share, compared to Obama’s 34,802 mentions, or 43%.

While each won their respective convention periods, Obama won his by a wider margin. Also, when combining mentions from both time periods, Obama received 52% of the total, compared to McCain’s 48%.

That Obama retained a lead is especially notable given that the day after the Democratic convention was the day McCain announced Palin as his running mate, which boosted McCain-related coverage during the Democratic convention time period. The timing of the Palin announcement was a clear effort to steal Obama’s thunder, but it couldn’t quite offset the coverage Obama received during the Democratic convention itself.


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.

If Money Talks, Which Candidate Speaks Loudest?

Dow Jones Insight Staff

With Barack Obama’s announcement this week that he had raised a record $66 million in August and lined up more than 500,000 first-time donors, we looked at how the four candidates compared recently on the issue of fundraising.

Obama, by far the leader in donations from the public, also leads the way in terms of media coverage on the topic, though not by much. There were 1,740 mentions of his name in close proximity to fundraising-related terms in the previous seven days, or 36% of the total 4,826 fundraising mentions of the four candidates over that period. Because Obama declined to take public funds to finance his campaign on the assumption that he could raise far more on his own and spend it as he wished, fundraising events will continue to be a central activity for the Democratic nominee going forward. And with Obama as the far more galvanizing half of the ticket, his running mate, Joe Biden, has not played a very public fundraising role, netting just 279 mentions related to the issue, or 6% of the total.

On the Republican side, McCain, who has accepted public financing and is therefore limited in how much he can raise and how he can spend it, is expected to spend far less time drumming up donations, leaving much of that role to his running mate. Nonetheless, in the previous week McCain drew 1,665 mentions in reference to fundraising, or 35% of all fundraising mentions, as the media compared the state of McCain’s coffers with Obama’s. Palin, meanwhile, received 1,142 mentions on the issue, or 24%, as she took on a major fundraising role for the McCain campaign, with the goal of appealing to the conservative base and enabling McCain to focus on the issues.



Methodology: All charts and figures above reflect mentions of the candidates in both mainstream and social media sources. 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.

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.

Olympics, Vacations Help McCain Narrow Overall Coverage Gap, but Only a Little…

Dow Jones Insight Staff

The McCain team took only modest advantage of Obama’s weeklong Hawaiian vacation to get its candidate in the news, opting instead to focus on fundraising, controlling press access to keep McCain on-message and getting a bit of a rest for him too. Nonetheless, McCain’s overall coverage numbers in mainstream and social media in the period of July 17 to August 17 (irrespective of issue, as opposed to the issues-oriented coverage discussed above) did improve relative to Obama’s, especially after Obama’s tour of the Middle East and Europe came to an end.

Obama had opened up an enormous coverage advantage as he toured the Middle East and Europe between July 19 and July 26, giving several high-profile speeches. But starting around July 30, McCain began to close the gap somewhat, especially around August 8th, when Obama set off for a vacation in Hawaii and much of the world (and the media) turned its attention toward the Olympics. He never quite did eliminate the gap, though he came close in the past few days.

On a percentage share basis, McCain came closest to matching Obama on August 16, the day on which the two candidates spoke at a forum at a California megachurch. McCain received 49% of the 9,250 total mentions of the two candidates, or 4,559 mentions compared to Obama’s 4,691. The difference of 132 mentions was also the smallest difference in raw numbers in the period analyzed. McCain also performed well on August 6, when he received 47% of 19,974 total mentions, or 9,334 to Obama’s 10,640; on August 3 (a Sunday), when he received 46% of 13,873 total mentions, or 6,378 mentions to Obama’s 7,495; and on July 31, when he received 45% of 21,335 mentions, or 9,632 to Obama’s 11,703.

For the period as a whole, McCain drew a share of 42%, or 218,796 mentions, versus 296,179 mentions, or 58%, for Obama.



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.

…Still, Obama Maintains Big Lead in Headline Mentions

Dow Jones Insight Staff

Looking at mentions of both candidates in headlines only, which we view as a measure of what’s top-of-mind for editors and bloggers, the race is not nearly as close.

In mainstream press sources from July 17 through August 17, Obama’s name was mentioned in headlines 52,790 times, for a 65% share of all headline mentions, compared with just 28,588, or 35%, for McCain.

The picture in social media was not much better for McCain, as Obama was mentioned 59,346 times, for a 63% share, while McCain was mentioned 34,659 times, for a 37% share.

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.

Obama Continues to Lead in Total Mentions

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

While McCain received fewer mentions in the context of all four countries discussed above, the totals are actually more competitive than they first appear, given that McCain is still receiving less coverage than Obama overall. In the same week analyzed above (July 14 – July 21), Obama was mentioned 60,654 times in all tracked mainstream and social media sources, for a 59% share, compared to McCain’s 42,463 mentions, or 41% share.

Even after stripping out all mentions pertaining to the issues of faith and race (on which Obama has consistently trounced McCain), Obama still drew 57% of all mentions in the seven days compared with 43% for McCain.

Taking that split into account, Obama still bested McCain on Afghanistan and Israel – as his share on the two issues exceeded his share of all coverage minus the two excluded issues – while McCain improved his performance on Iraq and Iran, as his share on those issues exceeded his share overall.

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.

Obama and the Middle East

Dow Jones Insight Staff

Also ranking high and moving up in the table of issues is that of Afghanistan, where Obama stopped on his current tour of the Middle East and Europe and toward which he says the U.S. must shift its focus, instead of Iraq.

In the period July 14 – July 21, as Obama geared up for and then began the trip, he was mentioned in reference to Afghanistan 8,299 times, or 61% of all mentions of the two candidates in conjunction with Afghanistan in mainstream and social media sources. That was well above McCain’s 5,355 mentions, or 39%.

He also exceeded McCain in mentions of Iraq and Israel, both also destinations on his tour, as well as Iran. In all tracked sources, Obama was mentioned 2,052 times in relation to Iraq, or 54% of the total, while McCain drew 1,779 mentions, or 46%. McCain kept the totals close by responding to the Obama trip with a steady stream of criticism of Obama’s earlier opposition to the surge of troops in Iraq and his proposal to withdraw combat troops within 16 months.

On the issue of Israel, Obama received 1,427 mentions, or 59%, compared to 990, or 41%, for McCain. Obama was mentioned 1,416 times (54%) in relation to Iran, compared to McCain’s 1,217 (46%).

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.

‘Race’ is Most Discussed Obama Issue in Press, and a Close Second in Social Media

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

It’s stating the obvious to say that race will be a factor in November’s election, but we are surprised at how the issue has been playing out comparatively in the press and social media and in relation to other key issues, according to analysis by Dow Jones Insight.

We examined Obama’s coverage in relation to the issue of race over the past 14 days, limiting the timeframe in an effort to exclude the initial bump of post-nomination commentary about the historic nature of the nomination and focus instead on how the media has been covering race in comparison to other current high-profile issues as the campaign moves into the nuts-and-bolts phase of getting elected.

In the mainstream press (print and Web) during the period June 10 through June 23, race was the top attention-getter in relation to Obama, edging out coverage of the faltering economy. Race was discussed in proximity to Obama’s name on 5,101 occasions, just barely exceeding the 5,020 mentions of the economy. Taxes and fundraising were also well-covered topics in articles about Obama, with 4,528 and 4,090 mentions, respectively. (See the next post for further insight on the fundraising issue.)

In social-media sources, meanwhile, race was a close second in terms of number of mentions in conjunction with Obama with 4,265, trailing faith-related discussions, which totaled 4,412 mentions. Both faith and race reflected continuing rumors and denials about Obama’s religious affiliation, his apologies to two Muslim women wearing head scarves who were asked to change seats at a rally, and reports on the Father’s Day speech he made in a Chicago church. As it did in the mainstream press, fundraising ranked high, with 2,547 mentions, while the economy and taxes lagged far behind with just 1,928 and 1,898 mentions, respectively.

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. Issues shown reflect the top coverage generators from among domestic issues for each source type discussed.

Smaller Field Not Yet Helping McCain’s Coverage

Dow Jones Insight Staff

With most now conceding that the presidential election has become a two-horse race, we thought we’d see if the election coverage was beginning to reflect the new reality. One would expect that McCain’s share, which had been low in comparison to the battling Democrats in our previous analyses, would improve in relation to Obama’s, with Obama and McCain focusing more directly on one another. However, that assumption has proved wrong, at least so far.

From May 1 to May 5 – the five days leading up to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, when Clinton’s chances to win the nomination looked stronger – McCain had 18,265 mentions in all tracked media versus 32,822 for Obama. That translated into a 36% share for McCain versus 64% for Obama (when considering those articles in which one or the other, or both, were mentioned). From May 8 to May 12 – the most recent five-day period since the primaries – McCain has received 13,496 mentions to Obama’s 23,337, for a share of 37%, narrowing the gap by just a single percentage point.

McCain did a slightly better job narrowing the gap when considering headline mentions only, though his overall share of headline coverage was lower than it was for all press mentions. Before the primaries, McCain had 6,660 headline mentions in all tracked sources, or 23% of the total, versus 22,457, or 77%, for Obama. Post-primaries, McCain raised his share to 26%, or 5,061, compared with 14,492, or 74% for Obama, for a three-percentage-point improvement.

Still, the results lead us to wonder if the McCain team either doesn’t think it’s quite over for Hillary or just hasn’t pushed hard against their remaining opponent. Either way, they’re going to have to work harder to get their candidate a competitive share of coverage.

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.

’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.

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).

…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.

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).

Controversies Bolster Negative Language in Election Coverage

Pati Carson
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Controversy, not policy, drove much of the election coverage for the Democrats over the past week and a half, as a number of presidential supporters made news in ways that affected the candidates themselves.

Clinton supporters Eliot Spitzer and Geraldine Ferraro found themselves in the spotlight for unexpected reasons, while Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, were the subject of plenty of controversy for the senator.

In total, Clinton was mentioned in proximity to “Geraldine Ferraro” or “Ferraro” a total of 4,597 times during the analyzed period, in proximity to “Eliot Spitzer” or “Spitzer” 2,550 times, and near “Samantha Power” 1,465 times.

Obama, meanwhile, received 4,388 mentions in proximity to “Geraldine Ferraro” or “Ferraro,” and he was mentioned 3,183 times in proximity to “Rev Jeremiah Wright,” “Jeremiah Wright” or “Wright.” He was also mentioned 1,342 times near “Samantha Power.”

These assorted flaps contributed to a marked increase in negativity of mainstream press coverage, based on our review of the automated favorability analysis in Dow Jones Insight. Breaking the coverage down into two equal segments since our last favorability analysis, the system considered 83,528 press documents and found 30,406 of them to contain either favorable or unfavorable language dominating in reference to a particular candidate.

Looking only at non-neutral coverage, we found that:

March 7-12: Obama’s coverage was positive 24% of the time, up from 21% in the preceding weeklast period analyzed, while Clinton dropped to 13% from 21% and McCain fell to 20% from 24%. During this period, Obama’s advisor referred to Clinton as a “monster,” Ferraro made racially controversial remarks about Obama, and Spitzer was named in a prostitution scandal. All three resigned. Clinton’s coverage seems to have taken the bigger hit overall though, as Clinton was the target of one comment, the source-by-association-of another, and lost a super-delegate.

March 13-18: Obama’s positive coverage fell sharply to 9%, while Clinton’s slipped a bit further to 10% and McCain’s dropped to 12%. During this period, Obama’s association with his pastor was questioned by some, and all three candidates engaged in a war of words over Iraq.

Methodology: Favorability analysis is of English-language documents only and was generated by software-based analysis which has been shown to be 80% accurate in similar corpora. Favorable and unfavorable ratings are assigned based on the words found in close proximity to a candidate's name. All neutral documents were excluded. The remaining 30,406 documents are those with discernible favorability. The source set excludes social media and press releases and includes global English language newspapers, magazines, broadcast transcripts and newswires.