Media And Campaigns
“Horse race” coverage
- Politics is a game of winners and losers, not a serious debate over ideas
- Post-debate speculation and spinning concerning who “won”
- Campaign strategies, tactics, victories, and blunders are the focus of coverage
- Gaffes, such as Gerald Ford’s assertion that Eastern Europe was not under the control of the USSR, receive disproportionate coverage
- Media covers campaign commercials
- Issues are left out
- “Sound bites”: average length of an uninterrupted quote declined from 60 seconds in 1958 to 9 seconds in 1988
- Early primary victories build “momentum”
- Coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire races is far out of proportion to their relative delegate share
- States compete to position their primaries & caucuses earlier in the season