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.

Media in Swing States Favoring McCain?

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

As we’ve stated before, we think counting headline mentions is a good yardstick for measuring what the media considers to be the most important parts of the election story each day. This time around, we looked at headline mentions in mainstream press, broken down along the Red State/Blue State/Swing State divide.

During the period July 14 – July 21, Obama drew the highest share of headline mentions from mainstream press in the Red States, accounting for 66% of all headline mentions of the two candidates (or 3,072 mentions), compared with McCain’s 34% (or 1,552). Obama also led in Blue States, where sources put his name up top only slightly less often, with 64% (or 5,575 mentions) to McCain’s 36% (or 3,109). In the Swing States press, however, while Obama still enjoyed a sizeable lead, it was smaller than in either Red or Blue States. As shown in Chart 3 below, press outlets in Swing States chose to highlight McCain’s name 38% of the time (or 3,070 headline mentions) to Obama’s 62% (5,001 mentions).
Chart: Headline Mentions in Swing States

Methodology: Figures in the chart reflect mentions of the two candidates in headlines in newspapers, Web sites, and television and radio broadcasts originating in the states listed below. Note that not all 50 U.S. states are included in the three groups.

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. Swing states are defined as those that were carried twice by the Democrats and twice by the Republicans in the four most recent presidential elections: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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.

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.

Obama Maintains Clear Lead over McCain in Media Mentions

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Barack Obama continues to be the candidate to beat as he goes week after week with more coverage than John McCain.

Not surprisingly, for much of the primary season, McCain took a back seat to the excitement of the race between Obama and his then rival Hillary Clinton. When Clinton stepped out of the spotlight, we started looking closely at the Obama-McCain tallies, expecting the numbers would get closer during the dog days of summer campaigning. And the numbers have tightened; but in most cases only modestly.

Over the past month, McCain has closed the gap, but he’s still maintaining his self-proclaimed “underdog” status when it comes to his count of individual mentions in the mainstream press and across social media, according to analysis conducted using Dow Jones Insight.

The basic measure of this is through total media mentions. In the seven-day period ending July 7, Dow Jones Insight tallied 90,882 mentions of either candidate across all media types. Obama racked up 56% of those mentions to McCain’s 44%.

Looking at a subset of the U.S. media – just newspapers and broadcast outlets in the Red States, Blue States and Swing States – we see a closer race. The analysis shows 54% for Obama and 46% for McCain in each of these three groups. In the past these numbers have always been close, but this is the first time we've noticed they are in lock-step, demonstrating to us that the media are on the whole not being swayed by the the voting tendancies of their audience.



When one considers just message boards and blogs, the numbers typically lean more toward Obama, though this week McCain cut three percentage points off Obama’s lead, making the social media breakdown 57% for Obama and 43% for McCain.



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.

Perhaps Headlines Tell the True Story

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Our favorite media metric for measuring election coverage comes from counting headlines. This seems to be a good yardstick by which we can measure what the media considers to be the most important parts of the election story each day and what the blogging community is countering with. We see this as a measure of what’s top-of-mind for the editors and bloggers. This week when counting all headline mentions of either candidate, we found 31,193 across all media. A decisive 63% of those were Obama mentions to 37% McCain mentions. (Headlines mentioning both men were essentially counted twice, once for each of them.)

Bloggers are very much still focused on Obama with the split there this week at 66% to 34%.The mainstream press is slightly more even-handed with a 61% to 39% breakdown, again favoring Obama.

When Considering only Policy Issues, the Numbers Start to Even Out

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Certainly not all mentions of candidates’ names are ones the campaigns are pleased to see. So it follows that more is not always better; and saying "Obama leads McCain in media mentions" doesn't paint the full picture.

Obama does seem to continue to garner a lot of coverage about what we consider to be non-substantive issues – talk of his faith, his race, his fundraising and his wife. During the seven days ending July 7, Obama saw 13,591 of his mentions being in context of one of these four discussions. McCain had his name mentioned in the context of one of these, half as many times (6,910 mentions).

Overall, the picture continues to favor Obama, but when looking only at mentions of the candidates in the context of what we consider important policy issues facing the nation, the media-coverage race is nearly a dead-heat.

Depending on which issues you include or exclude, the tally slips one way or the other, but remains close. For example we see a statistical tie when looking at the sum of coverage of the economy, the environment, health care, taxes, gun control, energy, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and terrorism. In the seven days ending July 7 we tallied 64,392 mentions of Obama in close proximity to one of these issues and 64,081 for McCain. For each issue the two are consistently very close.

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.

Media Bias Can Sneak in if You’re Not Watching Carefully

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

Here is an interesting observation we came across while conducting other analysis.

If you think news editors can’t have an impact on their readers’ perception of the news, consider this.

A July 6 news analysis by an Associated Press reporter paints a pretty negative picture of the state of the McCain campaign. “John McCain calls himself an underdog. That may be an understatement,” so states the lede of political reporter Liz Sidoti’s piece. McCain trails Obama “in polls, organization and money while trying to succeed a deeply unpopular fellow Republican in a year that favors Democrats.” The article goes on to point out some highlights, but it’s mostly gloom for McCain.

The article ran in several newspapers including the El Paso Times, The (Columbia) State, Myrtle Beach’s The Sun News, The Beaufort (South Carolina) Gazette and the Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star. In every case, the headline that topped it was: “Analysis: McCain struggles to regain footing.”

Now, the piece also ran in Utah’s conservative Deseret Morning News (owned indirectly by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). There the headline seems to have lost the “struggles” (and the word “analysis”) saying only “McCain Regaining Footing.”

Campaign-Finance Decisions Causing Trouble for Both Candidates

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

Obama is enjoying a tremendous lead in money raised to support his campaign, but he also seems to be winning the battle for favorable coverage on the issue of fundraising itself, which took a rather contentious turn last week.

Obama announced June 19 that he would not take public financing for the general election, a decision that means he is free to spend the record-breaking several hundred million dollars he’s raised thus far. The McCain camp says that announcement is a reversal of a pledge he’d made earlier in the campaign. McCain, meanwhile, has raised far less overall and plans to accept public financing.

Obama has received quite a bit of bad press over the announcement and has been labeled a flip-flopper by some. But it appears that the discussion of McCain’s resulting financing disadvantage, plus some finger-pointing at McCain by the Obama team as it defended the decision, has ultimately outweighed the flip-flopper criticism and produced more negative language in association with McCain than with Obama. Obama said his campaign would need the additional funds in expectation of future anti-Obama ads that would need to be rebutted and noted that McCain himself, a well-known campaign-finance reformer, was still taking money from lobbyists and PACs.

For the five days after Obama’s announcement (June 19-23), Dow Jones Insight identified 1,118 press documents mentioning Obama and/or McCain in proximity to terms related to campaign finance, and the automated favorability-analysis feature found 538 of these documents to contain either favorable or unfavorable language dominating in reference to the candidate and issue.

Looking only at this non-neutral coverage, we found that Obama was discussed unfavorably on the topic of fundraising in 249 separate articles, or 86% of his total non-neutral coverage, while just 42 articles, or 14%, discussed Obama and financing using favorable language. But McCain fared worse, as 222 articles, or 90% of his non-neutral coverage, was unfavorable, and just 25 documents, or 10%, were favorable.

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 538 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.

‘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.

McCain Still Struggling to Get as Much Press as Obama

By Glenn Fannick

Dow Jones Insight Staff

Will McCain ever catch up to Obama in media coverage? For months it seemed he was often relegated to the inside pages and mentioned fewer times or in shorter pieces as the media and the public focused on what was called a historic race between Clinton and Obama. The McCain team recognized their struggle to be noticed, announcing a push in April to get him back in the media's sights. It failed. His coverage remained flat.

It was Clinton’s continued candidacy, people assumed, that was keeping McCain tomorrow's story. As soon as she dropped out, his camp certainly hoped McCain would be getting equal billing.

And to some extent we are seeing things change. Obama's media lead has been shrinking a bit in the past week or so; but with two weeks since the Democratic primaries ended and 10 days since Clinton officially ended her campaign for the presidency, the numbers still show Obama ahead of McCain in virtually every way we slice the numbers.

Dow Jones Insight tracked 54,920 mentions of the two candidates' names over the past seven days from about 20,000 mainstream (print and online) media sources. Obama accounted for about 56% of those mentions compared to McCain's 44%. In the two million social media sites analyzed, Dow Jones Insight found Obama’s lead a few percentage points narrower, however, with 55% of total mentions for Obama compared to 45% for McCain.

The only place McCain seems to be talked about more is on the talk shows on MSNBC, where he consistently outpaces the Democrats in individual mentions. The other networks analyzed (Fox News Channel and CNN) continue to talk about Obama more than McCain on their regular political shows.

If you compare the quality of coverage of the two candidates in all media, you see perhaps a more telling picture. While McCain is slowly closing in on Obama in the number of times each is mentioned, a larger gap exists when you look at headline mentions. Obama was mentioned in 16,196 headlines in our survey from June 11 to 17, while McCain had only 9,264 mentions – a 64% / 36% split.

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.

'Change' is Unchanged on Top of 'Hot-Button' Word List

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

In the Dow Jones Insight index of hot-button words, we see "change" again leading the pack in the period of June 11 to June 17, with 4,747 occurrences in the context of one or the other of the candidates (62% of those were alongside Obama). In second with about half as many mentions was "hope" (this time 60% of those were with Obama). "Experience" was a close third, with McCain getting 56% of those mentions. "Progress," a word McCain tried to use as a counter to "change," did not show forward movement and was fourth; the candidates split that one. The negative issues that were previous high-fliers continued to lag: "bitter," "divisive" and "elitist/elitism" all had scant mentions. And "electability," once an issue everyone focused on, was hardly mentioned last week.

Also of note: The Obama camp has been trying to attach McCain to President Bush whenever it can. While not a hot-button word per se, we are tracking that along with the others. There were only 205 mentions of that concept in seven days.

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 6,000 message boards.

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.

Obama’s Strengths? Faith and Fundraising

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

As the election officially became a two-man race after Hillary Clinton withdrew her candidacy over the weekend, the two nominees continued turning their attention more pointedly toward one another – and the issues they believe will help them win in November. Based on data from the tracked social media in the past eight days, their efforts have resonated clearly on certain issues.

Obama dominated even more than usual on the issue of faith over the past eight days, with 2,423 mentions of his name occurring in close proximity* to faith-related terms, representing some 40% of his total issues-related coverage, compared to McCain’s 953 mentions, or 23% of his issues coverage.

A number of events drove the chatter, including Obama’s announcement that he and his family had cut ties with their Chicago church and his condemnation of a visiting priest’s sermon mocking Clinton, as well as efforts to court the Jewish vote with a speech to a pro-Israel group in which he outlined his proposed strategy for the Middle East, which includes being, as the now pro-Obama Clinton put it, “a good friend to Israel.”

On the issue of fundraising, Obama exceeded McCain in mentions by almost as much as he has in actual funds raised after he announced a ban on lobbyist and PAC donations to the Democratic National Committee, as part of his effort to portray McCain as beholden to special interests due to his ties with lobbyists. Obama received 814 mentions on the topic of fundraising, or about 14% of his overall issues coverage, compared with 399 mentions, or just 10%, for McCain. However, more isn’t always better, as the conviction of a one-time Obama fundraiser for fraud and money-laundering also helped boost his lead on the issue.

McCain held clear leads on the blogs and boards in terms of taxes and the economy, with both driven in part by his efforts to distance himself from the Bush economic policies while the Obama team continues to link them. McCain’s continued support for a gas-tax holiday for the summer also received coverage.

On the economy, McCain was mentioned 815 times on the blogs and boards during the tracked period, or 20% of his total coverage on all issues, compared to 558 mentions, or 9%, for Obama. On the tax issue, McCain saw 553 mentions, or 7% of his total issues coverage, while Obama received 439 mentions, or 7%.

*Close proximity is within about 50 words.

Methodology: Sources analyzed include 2 million of the most influential blogs and more than 6,000 message boards. Issues shown are the 10 most active domestic issues for the two candidates over the analyzed period. Percentages are based on the total number of mentions for those 10 issues.

Local Press Continue to Show only Slightest Tendency to Reflect their Readers' Voting Records

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

The Obama camp has been in general-election campaign mode for some time, seeing Clinton as no longer a threat some weeks ago. Therefore that's where our media analysis is focused.

When looking at how much media attention has been given to Obama versus McCain over the past few weeks, it really has been no contest. While McCain has been slowly gaining in press mentions each week at Clinton's expense, Obama continues to garner nearly two-thirds of mentions in the head-to-head comparison.

That doesn't change when dividing the country along the now-quite-familiar Red-Blue battle lines. The recent presidential voting records of the states continue to show only the slightest correlation with the volume of local press coverage a candidate receives.

When comparing John McCain's and Barack Obama's media mentions over the period of May 28 to June 4, we see McCain received about 40% of press mentions in Red States -- those which have voted Republican in the past four presidential elections -- and 39% in Blue States -- those with the opposite recent historical record.

Michelle Obama Winning First Lady Race

By Glenn Fannick
Dow Jones Insight Staff

As the primaries end and the general election becomes the candidates' focus, not only does Barack Obama continue to top John McCain in media mentions in every way we slice the data, but his wife is also consistently way out ahead of McCain's wife.

Michelle Obama has received more mentions in both the mainstream press and social media than has Cindy McCain. Obama received 70% of mentions to McCain's 30%, comparing the two senators’ wives across the 2 million blogs and message boards analyzed by Dow Jones Insight between May 3 and June 2. The mainstream press was only slightly less skewed in coverage of the candidates' wives, with 67% of mentions for Obama and 33% for McCain.

But there have been days when the first-lady tally in the press has flipped. Thrice in the past month Cindy McCain passed Michelle Obama in press mentions -- a feat that Sen. McCain rarely achieves over his rival. Topics that pushed her past Obama included the McCains' dinner party with vice-presidential hopefuls, the release of Sen. McCain's medical records and discussion of her personal tax returns and family wealth. Michelle Obama saw a recent spike in mentions after she became the target in a Tennessee-GOP-backed online video.

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.

If Blogs Really Lead the Way, We May be in for a Surprise…

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

Over the past month or so, we’ve reported that Hillary Clinton’s mentions in the media have declined in tandem with the likelihood of her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate. We’ve also seen in our media analysis a tendency for issues to take hold in the blogs and boards before they hit the mainstream media (the Wright controversy, for example). This week we took a look at the relative mentions of the three remaining candidates in both mainstream and social media, and we were quite surprised at what we found on the blogs and boards.

Two weeks ago (May 13-19), Clinton’s coverage on blogs and boards hit a low point as she received just a 25% share, with McCain finally rising to second place with 29% and Obama padding his already comfortable lead to 46%. But in the most recent seven-day period (May 20-26), Clinton jumped back into second place on the blogs and boards with 30%, compared to McCain who stayed level at 29%. At the same time, Obama’s lead shrank to 41% from 46%, so clearly the Clinton mentions came at the expense of Obama’s coverage.

Having dropped their discussion of Clinton to such low levels just a week earlier, social media appears to be ahead of the curve again: some protesting her continued presence in the race, others urging her to fight on, many railing against her remarks about Robert F. Kennedy and weighing the pros and cons of a possible vice presidency.

Methodology: Figures in the chart reflect mentions of the three candidates in postings on 2 million of the most influential blogs and more than 6,000 message boards between March 25 and May 26. Figures in Table 1 reflect the same mentions for the most recent four weeks only.

…While Mainstream Press Coverage Shows More a Predictable Trend

Meanwhile, Clinton’s coverage in the mainstream press has shrunk slowly in the weeks since the May 5 primaries. In the most recent seven-day period (May 20-26), Clinton’s share of all mentions fell 2 percentage points to 32%, while McCain gained two percentage points to 27%, and Obama slipped by one point to 41%.

Methodology: Figures in Chart 2 reflect mentions of the three candidates in 6,000 mainstream publications analyzed by Dow Jones Insight between March 25 and May 26. Figures in Table 2 reflect the same mentions for the most recent four weeks only.

Red State/Blue State Issues Coverage Similar But Shows Some Key Differences

By Dow Jones Insight Staff

With all the talk in the 2004 election about the differing concerns and electorates of Red States vs. Blue States, or those considered to be solidly democratic or republican states, Dow Jones Insight took a look at how the coverage by mainstream media in those states differed on some of the more controversial domestic “wedge” issues. (“Wedge” issues being social or political issues, often of a divisive or otherwise controversial nature, that split apart, or create a "wedge," in the support base of a political group.) While the results showed that the coverage had more in common than was different – on the issue of faith in particular – there were a few key areas where coverage levels between the two groups varied, in expected ways.

Blue States had more coverage about the environment (20% of total coverage for all candidates on the five wedge issues vs 18% in the Red States press) and on same-sex marriage (3% of total coverage on the issues vs 2% in the Red States press). Red States, meanwhile, had higher coverage on immigration (13% of all wedge issue coverage in Red vs 11% in Blue) and abortion (6% vs 5%). Faith was virtually equal, with Red States at 61% and Blue States at 60% on high volumes relative to the other issues.

The most noticeable differences overall involved McCain, who had higher coverage on immigration in the Red States press (20% of his total coverage on the five issues in Red States) than in Blue States (18% of his issues-related coverage), and higher coverage on same-sex marriage in Blue States (4% of all McCain coverage on the five issues) than in Red (3%), a small percentage overall but representing a disparity of 33%.

* 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.

Methodology: Figures in Chart 3 reflect mentions of the three candidates in close proximity (about 50 words) to terms related to the five tracked issues occurring in newspapers, Web sites, and television and radio broadcasts originating in the states listed for each group. Note that not all 50 U.S. states are included in the two groups.