Election News

How the economic disaster that occurred just weeks before Election Day changed the media’s campaign coverage, and perhaps the outcome, of the presidential race.

Three politicians who were forced from office by scandal are currently attempting comebacks. They are trying to overcome misdeeds that put them in the top five political scandals of recent years as measured by the amount of news coverage.

Religion played a minor role in coverage of the 2012 campaign, even though the race pitted the first major Mormon nominee against an incumbent whose faith has been a source of controversy. A new report from PEJ and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life examines role of faith in 15 months of campaign coverage.

Obama enjoyed a surge of positive news coverage the last week of the campaign—one of his best weeks in months—in the wake of new polls and Superstorm Sandy. How did Mitt Romney fare? Was the tone of the conversation different on social media than in the mainstream press? A new report offers answers.

Overview The 2012 presidential campaign was a frustrating experience for many voters, who say the campaign was more negative than usual and had less discussion of issues than in most previous campaigns. Both Obama and Romney get mixed grades for the job they did reaching out to voters, as do campaign consultants, the press and […]

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have both received more negative than positive coverage from the news media in the eight weeks since the conventions, but Obama has had an edge overall, a new PEJ study finds. The report also examines how the candidates fared in different media outlets, the tone of the conversation on social media and offers comparisons to 2008 campaign coverage.

As the presidential election enters the last lap, where are people going to learn about the campaign and the candidates? A new PEJ survey finds an increasingly diverse ecosystem for political news.

Overview Republicans express increasingly positive opinions about the presidential campaign and are now about as likely as Democrats to view the campaign as interesting and informative. In early September, shortly after the party conventions, far more Democrats than Republicans said the campaign was interesting and informative. The new survey by the Pew Research Center for […]

Overview The vast majority of Americans say they followed coverage of the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, including 56% who followed the debate live. Most of these real-time viewers watched on television, but 11% of live debate watchers were “dual screeners,” following coverage on a computer or mobile device at the […]