Update: November 15, 2008

Barack Obama won the US Presidential elections. We will show the media attention he generates until his nomination in January 2009. We will show the differences in terms of media attention with Republican candidate John McCain.

By November 15 ten days after the elections, the media attention gap has raised to 21 points.

Update: November 15, 2008

We present below the last measurement of global media attention produced by US president candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. The reversal of trend, favorable to Barack Obama, observed since late September continued during the last days of the campaign. In our precedent measurement (October 31) we showed that Obama took the advantadge again in terms of media attention. The difference was of 3.75 points by November 3 and 5.95 points by November 4 in the evening.

All precedent measurements can be found at the US Elections Section (Rep-Dem chapter)

Updated: October 31, 2008

We present below the measurment of the global media attention of US President candidates, up to October 30 2008.

Right now Barack Obama is coming back an it leads media coverage race again, continuing the upward trend experienced since the beginning of October. In our last published measurment (black dot in McCain's media coverage measurment) counted with some two percent points fo advantadge, that now reverts to Barack Obama.

This late evolution is consistent with the Scenario 1 concerning the relationship between media coverage and coting intention (se the post below "How Powerful is the Fourth Power?". It tends to confirm the hypothesis that media follows polls behaviour, instead of the other way round. This trend was the one with more probabilities to occur, according to precedent evolution. If this hypothesis prevail, we should still oberve an increase of the gap favorable to Barack Obama in terms of media coverage, whatever happens with voting intentions in this next crucial five days before the election.

Updated: October 15

We show in the graph how global media attention published in English is shared between John McCain and Barack Obama, final candidates from the Republican and Democrat parties.

In contrast will global polls, where apparently Barack Obama is solidly leading the race, John McCain is leading global media attention for the first time evenr, since late September. It is true that since then, the gap is faddening away, and both candidates are practically even in terms of media coverage. Our results tend to confirm that the financial turmoil and its economic consequences have turned into Obamas advantage.

Updated:  June 3, 2008

In our precedent measurement of the relative media attention of the remaining three candidates: Obama, Clinton and McCain we showed that the debate and media attention was almost entirely focussed on the tight Democrat election process.

Fifty days later our results show that Republican candidate McCain touched his lower level of media attention in our precedent measurement (23% of all media attention generaded by the tree candidates.  Since then we observe a clear upward trend, till the end of May, where the final disputes for clarifying the Democrat final candidate concentrate media interest again.

Media attention is thus opening to the bipartisan debate little by little, but as the gap between Republican elected candidate McCain and the final runner in the Democrat camp is presently so wide, we expect in the next weeks a huge increase of media attentions towards John McCain positions in comparison with the final Democrat  candidate.

Update: March 25, 2008

We show in this section a new measure of Media Attention Index to candidates, that we will update regularly till the defiitive nomination of the candidates. We offer a measure reflecting the media exposure of the remaining candidate in the Republican party, John McCain. In the Democrat side we show the evolution of media attention for the two last contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

In the precedent sections we showed specific measures concerning media attention for candidates in each party. Now we show an homogeneous measure of media attention concerning all three candidates.  We show in the graph how all media coverage given to the three candidates is captured by each one of them. All media coverage counts 100 points. This measure refers to media attention given by media in English language.

The results we show in the graph are revealing. The fierce nomination dispute between Clinton and Obama is currently atracting global media attention to US presidential campaign. Barack Obama receives 40% of all media attention, and Hillary Clinton 37.4%. These figures are far ahead from media coverage given to John McCain, which corresponds to a mere 22.9%.

More intriguing, we find that the withdrawal of the other candidates in the Republican side (Romney and Huckabee) has not been translated into a positive media momentum for McCain, as he has lost more than 7 percentual points from the peack of 30.3% of total media attention reached by mid February.

Of course, media attention is different in quality in both parties, as the Republican candidate can present a Presidential discourse, while the Democrat candidates defend a nomination discourse. Nevertheless, it is surprising to see that media attention given to McCain (relative to the Democrat candidates) is at its lowest levels since the beginning of the electoral campaign.

Updated: March 4, 2008

Global Partisan Media Attention Index refers to the relative media coverage given to the candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties.

As we showed in a the precedent evaluation of this index, media coverage was strongly oriented to Democrat candidates just before the first primaries, at the beginning of the year. The gap was narrowing till reaching the equalization in terms of media attention by mid January. The balance has been basically sistained till mid February. Since then, media is definetively focussing the attention towards Democrat candidates and debates. This trend is in line with the increase of uncertaintly concerning the final ticket in the Democrat side, between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whilst in the Republican camp Mike Huckabee does not retain sufficient attention, as we shoe in another analysis.

The uncertaininty of the outcome in the Democrat side is undisputely granting to this party a media attention momentum. This overexposure towards Democrat candidates can be beneficial concerning the final Presidential votation as far as this coverage helps the final candidate to vehiculate a clear and convincing message and the candidates' disputes do not enter into the personal sphere and ternish their profile.

 Last updated: January 24, 2008

In this section we show a measure of how global media give floor to the two main contending parties at the US elections, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

The measure we show below in the graph reflects the daily evolution of a composite index of the coverage given to the Democratic and Republican Party by English speaking media worldwide. This index is calculated as a combination of the media coverage given to the three main democrat candidates (Hillay R. Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards) and the four main republican candidates (John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Rowney).

Een if this measure does not necessarily reflect the power given to both parties in the press, it does allow to consider the time evolution of media presence of both parties, as it always uses the same reference.

Daily values correspond to the 30 days moving average news received.

Graph referring to data up to january 24th reflects that during the previous days (december 2007) to the first primary election at Iowa (January 3, 2008) democrat candidates had a media overexposure compared to republicans. This situation has completely changed since then, as by January 8 both parties received in average the same monthly media attention. By january 24 the treatment is almost perfectly even.