Issues and Democratic Primaries 2004

What Influences the News Coverage that Candidates Receive on Issues?
A Look at Jobs Coverage in the 2004 Presidential Election

Methods

My model will include numerous variables in order to test my hypothesis. The dependent variable for this paper will be the measure of news coverage a candidate receives on job-related issues. This jobs variable will be an adequate measure for determining the candidates’ overall coverage of the broader topic of the economy, mainly because jobs is such a salient issue and consistently ranked high in voter’s concern of the economy. An individual day will be the unit of observation.

The study includes six of the nine Democratic candidates: Wes Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Richard or Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, and Joseph Lieberman. Choosing these particular candidates came down to who simply was most likely to win a state in the upcoming primaries. The press coverage of these six candidates will constitute the dependent variables in the model for the study. A seventh subsection of my economic dependent variable will be the total number of stories on the issue of jobs, including those mentioned with regards to one or all of the candidates.

As my medium, I will use the two most recognized print sources for national and political news: The New York Times and the Washington Post. While other media outlets may provide a broader perspective of coverage on the issue of jobs – mainly since the issue is so volatile and makes for a many-sided debate – including other outlets will make it harder to determine causality and make it more difficult to compare with the other studies in my group project. I will use LexisNexis to do a search for all press releases by a candidate that specifically mention jobs. My search structure will be:

candidate and (candidate’s name) w/p jobs

This model will ensure that the coverage will discuss the candidate in relation to jobs, signifying a candidate’s coverage on the issue for better or worse. I will be searching articles during the time period of when most of the candidates announced their decision to run for President and the day after Super Tuesday; that is, from September 1, 2003 until March 3, 2004. This period spans the time when the race was just heating up through the most competitive time and until it was readily apparent that John Kerry would most likely be the Democrat’s 2004 Presidential Nominee.

I will include a number of independent variables in my model to try and determine the cause of increased or decreased press coverage of a certain candidate on the jobs issue. These independent variables include: press releases and FDCH Political Transcripts, as researched on LexisNexis and candidate-specific, the day in the data set, number of candidates in the race, the day of the week, the State of the Union Address (including the following two days), candidate debates and the dates the Labor Department released job and unemployment figures. Any one or more of these independent variables may affect my dependent variable, or the coverage a candidate receives on the jobs issue.

My first independent variable will be press releases as posted by the candidate himself on his website. These releases were collected over the same period of time as the press coverage. The detail of the data varied from candidate to candidate, but all information was retrieved directly from the candidate’s official website. I evaluated each press release to ensure the candidate himself made the statement concerning jobs and was not directly prompted by another person to address this issue. The same evaluative steps were taken for the FDCH Political Transcripts on LexisNexis. No debates were counted to avoid candidates responding to a prompt concerning the economy. The transcripts fell into the categories of news event, news program, news conference or media availability, with news event being the most numerous by far.

Days in the data set will be another independent variable. I will measure this variable in several different ways during my calculations. First and foremost, the variable will count chronologically the days of time period. Since press coverage in the newspapers comes a day after the events, I have adjusted the press coverage back one day in my reporting to more accurately reflect the candidates’ influence on the media. I expect a positive correlation between press coverage and the number of days in a data set: as the days progress, candidates will receive more and more coverage on the jobs issue, due to increased competition and sustained interest on jobs issue. Since some candidates dropped out of the race, especially in response to their losses in certain state primaries, I will also use a days variable to see the effects of the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina caucuses.

The number of candidates in the race should also affect the amount of press coverage a candidate receives. As the number of candidates decreases, especially after the three main caucuses mentioned above, the media will need to divide its attention less between fewer candidates. Therefore, the remaining candidates will receive increased coverage on jobs. Kerry, the candidate who never dropped out of the race, should have a strong negative correlation between his press coverage and the number of candidates in the race: as candidates drop out of the race, his press coverage will increase. The days the candidate is not in the race will not be counted in my model, as I used a separate variable to denote when a candidate was in the race and limited the correlation to those days.

I expect there to be other important days in the time span. Certain candidates may have certain days where they campaign harder or push their jobs issue more, and I will try to measure this by accounting for the days of the week. If the Democrats are so focused on the jobs issue, then I expect media coverage on the jobs issue to spike on the days when a debate occurs. The State of the Union Address drew a significant response from the media and Democrats alike as Bush laid out certain key policies for the coming year. I expect coverage of the job issue to increase the day of and the following days of the State of the Union Address, as more Democrats criticize the economy under the Bush administration by focusing on the jobs aspect.

Lastly, I expect a boost in candidate’s press coverage of the jobs issue on days where there is a Labor Department unemployment report. Labor Department statistics on unemployment figures, once another routine release of government data, were heavily cited by Democratic presidential candidates as evidence that the Bush administration had failed to create jobs and therefore rebound the economy. Many spoke of a “jobless recovery” where businesses increased productivity and profits seemingly at the expense of workers. The Labor Department statistics received relatively lots of media attention, encouraging candidates to further press the jobs issue. Therefore, I expect the days when a Labor Department releases job statistics to play a significant positive factor in increasing the media coverage received by a candidate on the jobs issue.

By including all of these independent variables, I hope to account for as much variation in the dependent variable as possible.

By Evans McGowan

© Davidson College, 2004, Department of Political Science, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035
Send comments, questions, and suggestions to Patrick Sellers
Created: 4/27/2004. Last updated: 5/2/2004.