Election Watch: An Overview

Election Watch is a research project conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a nonpartisan and nonprofit research institute affiliated with George Mason University. Every four years CMPA conducts a content analysis to provide systematic and reliable data on news coverage of the presidential campaign and candidates.

Trained researchers review each election-related news story on a statement-by-statement level, noting the source, focus, and tone of information in the story, with special attention to opinions that are expressed about the candidates’ policies and behavior. (For a more complete discussion of our research methodology, click here) . Because the criteria for our analyses are rigorously defined in advance and systematically applied, Election Watch results provide a social scientific description of election news that is useful to journalists, scholars and others interested in news media content.

CMPA has conducted Election Watch studies during every presidential campaign since 1988, from the pre-primary campaign “preseason” through election day in November. In each of the past election cycles, we have analyzed the ABC, CBS, and NBC network evening news shows, providing a unique repository of comparative data on how television election news has changed over six election cycles during the past twenty years.

In addition, depending on our resources, we have analyzed other news outlets during particular elections, including PBS, CNN, and FOX, and the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, as well as the candidates’ own speeches, television ads, and websites. This material represents one of the most extensive data bases of election news analysis in existence, currently covering over 7,000 stories across the five campaigns from 1988 to 2004. (In a separate but related project we tally all jokes about presidential candidates from the monologues of comedians on late-nite television.)

CMPA’s studies are distinctive not only in their breadth and depth but also in their dissemination. We pioneered the "rapid response" monitoring of election news. We analyze news stories in as close to real time as possible. We release our findings at various points throughout the election process in order to show how the media are covering the election and how voters are being informed. This enables us to act as an impartial watchdog in the ongoing debate over media coverage. Our results appear first in the form of brief press releases, then in greater detail in CMPA’s Media Monitor newsletter, and finally in scholarly articles and books.

More detailed information on our findings can be found in the Media Monitors archived on our website at cmpa.com. The most complete compilation and comparative analysis appears in Stephen Farnsworth and Robert Lichter, The Nightly News Nightmare: Television’s Coverage of Presidential Elections 1988-2004. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007, second edition.