This page, created by Matt Garfield, is part of an undergraduate assignment at Davidson College.

 

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Results

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V. Results

Ranking the candidates’ results in the frequency test is useful because it provides a general idea of how much newspaper coverage of endorsements they received in total. The frequency results did not always correlate to the number of endorsements given to a candidate, perhaps indicating a weakness in the model.

Why did the model find that coverage increased as the number of candidates in the race declined? The answer to this question is perhaps obvious. With fewer candidates in the race, newspapers naturally had fewer opportunities to write about candidates other than those remaining. With the same amount of space to fill, it is not surprising that coverage of the remaining candidates increased. Also, as the primaries approached and captured greater public attention across the country, the amount of total coverage of the race in general increased.

This paper is unable to provide conclusive evidence that newspaper endorsements alone cause more media coverage. Other variables, such as the number of candidates in the race and the day of the week, also play important roles in determining media coverage.

Another potential pitfall in the research used in this paper is the search engine Lexis Nexis. It is possible that a candidate’s name could appear in a headline or article that also included the word “endorsement,” but this article could be entirely about another candidate or issue. As a result, the research could have falsely assumed that a candidate received an “endorsement article” that he did not deserve, thus skewing the data.

An additional shortcoming is that some newspaper endorsements may have been omitted. The research used in this paper relied on press releases found on each individual candidate’s Web sites, and it is possible that those sites left out certain endorsements. Some campaigns emphasize keeping their Web sites up to date more than others, and it is possible that endorsements from smaller newspapers did not trigger press releases.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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© Davidson College, 2004, Department of Political Science, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035
Send comments, questions, and suggestions to Dr. Patrick Sellers, Professor of Political Science.
Created: 4/29/2004. Last updated: 5/03/2004.