Dow Jones Insight-2008 Presidential Election Media Pulse: Obama Maintains 'Headlines' Lead in Majority of Battleground States; M
October 28 2008 - 4:37PM
PR Newswire (US)
NEW YORK, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Barack Obama continued to widen
his lead on many fronts in the media coverage race during the past
week, but with a week to go until Election Day, opponent John
McCain managed to narrow the gap in some battleground states,
according to results from the Dow Jones Insight-2008 Presidential
Election Media Pulse. During the period of October 19 through 25,
Obama increased his lead in total number of headline mentions in
four battleground states -- Nevada (by 21 percentage points, on the
heels of visits by him and his wife), North Carolina (by 10
points), Florida (4 points) and Missouri (3 points). He lost
ground, though, in Colorado (where his lead shrunk by 6 percentage
points, with a strong push by McCain there), Ohio (2 points) and
Pennsylvania (2 points). The headline race appears closest in
Pennsylvania, a battleground state where Obama has a comfortable
lead in public polls but where the McCain camp insists its private
polls show the state at a dead heat. For the week of October 19 to
25, headline mentions for the candidates showed a 51%-49% split,
with coverage barely leaning Obama's way. Of the issues being
discussed, the economy and taxes were the top two. In comparison to
the other battleground states, Pennsylvania's coverage differed
slightly, with the issue of "experience" showing up among the top
10 tracked issues, which was not the case in the other battleground
states. The everyman message of "Joe the plumber" also continued to
resonate in Pennsylvania as in the other battlegrounds, being
mentioned more than the issues of jobs, health care and the
financial bailout. International issues, including both wars, did
not make the top 10. Issues Coverage Hits a Plateau but Obama's
Share of It Does Not With Election Day approaching, 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
still managed to widen 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 during the period of September 26 through October 26, when
the issues are grouped by type we again see modest changes in
coverage: -- Discussion of the various issues related to the
economic crisis made up 46% of the total this time around, down one
point from 47% -- The percentage of talk regarding non-economic
domestic issues, like education and same-sex marriage, decreased
one point to 16% from 17% -- Candidate-specific issues (such as
faith and race), which accounted for 24% of the discussion, were up
one point from 23% -- Issues related to the wars and the Middle
East stayed level at 13% of the total 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 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. Bush Still Gets Some Press in this Election Frenzy In
taking a look at how the end-point of Bush's presidency has
impacted his coverage in the media, Dow Jones Insight found that
Bush had an 11% share of voice, compared to Obama's 49% and
McCain's 40%, when counting headline mentions from September 27 to
October 26 in approximately 20,000 mainstream news publications and
media Web sites. The loss of attention for President Bush is more
apparent in the social media landscape than in the traditional
media, with Bush hardly ever making it into the headlines, getting
just 2% of all social media headline mentions of the three during
the same timeframe. When the president has gotten mentioned in the
mainstream media of late, it's generally in reference to the
economy or the financial sector bailout. For the economy, from
September 27 to October 26, Bush received headline mentions a bit
less than one-third as often as either McCain or Obama, with 11,762
Bush mentions compared to 31,116 for McCain and 31,106 for Obama.
For the bailout, the president saw much more comparable volumes,
netting 11,310 headline mentions to McCain's 15,138 and Obama's
14,300. No 'Surprise' in October as Obama Rolls Along The last full
month of the 2008 presidential election is nearly over and we have
not had the "October surprise" many political analysts have quietly
speculated might occur. Instead, the mainstream media and the
blogosphere have seen little excitement through October, at least
as measured by media mentions. McCain had a strong September in the
media, passing Obama for the first time during the general
campaign. However, it was short-lived, with Obama re-emerging as
the lead in media coverage early in October and expanding his lead
every week since. Meanwhile, Palin, who was greatly responsible for
McCain's rise in media coverage in early September, continues to
gain more coverage than Biden -- topping him by more than 2 to 1 on
most days -- but her coverage has remained below that of McCain's
in the weeks following the vice presidential debate. The Dow Jones
Insight-2008 Presidential Election Media Pulse provides a
high-level view of a competitive media landscape and demonstrates
how candidates and issues are covered in the media and how that
coverage changes over time. Dow Jones Insight combines proven
research methodologies, trusted content and advanced text-mining
and visualization tools to deliver strategic qualitative and
quantitative media measurement metrics. Organizations use the
analysis to nurture their reputation, demonstrate the effectiveness
of their communications strategies and achieve business objectives.
The platform processes nearly a million articles, Web pages, blogs
and message board posts per day. The charts are available at
http://dowjonesinsight.blogspot.com/ and can be reproduced in print
and online media. For further information about the Dow Jones
Insight solutions visit http://www.dowjonesinsight.com/ and to
learn more about The Dow Jones Insight-2008 Presidential Election
Media Pulse, please contact Shannon Sullivan at +1 609 627 2312 or
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