Election News

As the 2012 presidential race shifts from the GOP primary battle to the general election matchup between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, a new PEJ study reveals what the public has been told about the two candidates by the media.  It also finds that Mitt Romney emerged as the winner of the media primary weeks before Rick Santorum dropped out.

Overview With a critical Republican primary in Florida, the 2012 presidential campaign was the public’s top story last week, closely followed by news about the economy. About a quarter (23%) say they followed news about the candidates for president most closely. Another 18% say the economy was their top story. Nearly as many (15%) say […]

Overview With a contested primary in only one party this year, fewer Americans are closely following news about the presidential campaign than four years ago. As a consequence, long-term declines in the number of people getting campaign news from such sources as local TV and network news have steepened, and even the number gathering campaign […]

A new report documents how the swirl of sexual harassment allegations contributed to surprise frontrunner Herman Cain’s most difficult week of news coverage to date.

Which candidate has fared best in the news media in the first five months of the race for president?  

While the focus this year has been on the GOP's race, Democrats express about as much interest in 2012 candidates as do Republicans.

In today’s news landscape, both mainstream and new media sources shape the narrative. A new PEJ study finds that no single unified message reverberated throughout the media universe in the wake of the November 2 voting and what one learned depended largely on where one got the news.  How did the post election-day narrative differ from the front pages to the television studies and from bloggers to Twitterers?

The midterms were a quarter of the newshole last week, and have been the third most covered story of the year, behind only the economy and the Gulf oil spill.

The race for Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat began largely drama-free and little-covered and ended as the most surprising and intensely-covered political story in the country. Which candidate got the most favorable attention? How did coverage change over time? How did the local Boston papers differ in their reporting? A new study examines newspaper coverage of the race.

What was the big religion story of the general election? A new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in conjunction with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life examines how the media covered religious matters.