Harvard study shows how the media’s horse race obsession propelled Donald Trump through the primaries
Donald Trump complains often about how the media covers his campaign. But according to a new Harvard study, no candidate benefited more from the way the media covered the presidential primaries than the presumptive Republican nominee himself.
The main takeaway of the study, conducted by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, is the confirmation of what many political news consumers have long suspected: The media is obsessed with the so-called horse race of presidential campaigns.
From January 1 to June 7 (the date of the last cluster of state primaries), 56 percent of election news focused on the competitive game, or horse race, or the primary race. Meanwhile, 33 percent of news focused on the process of the campaigns, while just 11 percent total focused on “substantive concerns.”
According to the author of the study—Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at the Harvard Kennedy School—that tendency helped a certain leading Republican candidate.
“Without question, Trump benefited most from the news media’s focus on the horse race in the early phases of the primaries,” Patterson told Boston.com.
“The focus meant that he dominated his Republican rivals in the amount of press attention and the degree to which it was positive in nature, both of which have been shown in studies to influence voters’ choices in the early phases of a nominating race,” he said.
Nature of Donald Trump news coverage from January 1 to June 7.
Winning elections, of course, provided Trump with positive press, according to Patterson’s study. And when the race itself was the media’s focus, it overshadowed sources of negative press for Trump, such as his policy positions and character. It wasn’t until much later in the race that the media significantly increased its substantive coverage of Trump.
And even when candidates’ policies were mentioned early on, Patterson found the framing was often geared toward how they played into the horse race: For example, how Trump’s position on immigration might help him win in certain states, rather than what his policy proposals would actually mean.
“Issues were reported, less as substantive policy questions, than as tokens in the strategic game,” Patterson wrote.
The study also expanded on the Shorenstein Center’s previous report finding Trump received a disproportionate amount of media coverage in the six months before the primaries began. That pattern did not fade once voting began; Trump’s coverage eclipsed that of his opponents, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Republican candidate coverage during the single-state opening primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.
According to the study, Trump’s largest jumps in the polls followed the New Hampshire and the March 1 Super Tuesday primaries, in which he received an increase in coverage following his respective victories.
Perhaps not coincidentally, since the very early stages of the campaign, Trump himself echoed the media’s focus on the horse race. In interviews, rallies, and on social media, the Republican frontrunner-turned-presumptive nominee boasted unlike any other candidate about his poll numbers.
It was not until Trump has wrapped up the nomination—after Cruz and Kasich had dropped out in the beginning of May—that media coverage of his campaign became decisively negative.
“Victories in the absence of competitors are less newsworthy, opening up news time and space for other subjects,” said Patterson, noting that news stories began heavily focus on Trump’s critics.
Trump still, however, received more coverage in that last month than either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, “a development that has no possible explanation other than journalistic bias,” according to Patterson’s study.
Weekly coverage during the primaries of both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
In the end, Patterson concludes that the effect of how media covered the 2016 primaries had the effect of handicapping sprinters midway through a race.
“It is as if the runners in a 100-meter dash were stopped after 20 meters, with those in the lead placed at the 25-meter mark while those in the back placed at the 15-meter mark before the restart,” he said, adding that by the time substance came “more fully into the mix,” the race was “nearly settled.”
Patterson said the problems in how the media covered the primaries were ultimately rooted in a mismatch between the structure of the nominating process and journalistic values. Focusing on who wins and loses obscures the proportional allocation of delegates employed in the nominating process, he said.
“The complex nature of the presidential primary system does not sit easily with news values,” he wrote.
The presence, and spectacle, of Trump, according to Patterson, made this conflict of interests particularly noticeable this year. And all for the better for the presumptive GOP nominee.
“Trump’s candidacy was propelled by press coverage throughout 2015 and into the first three stages of the primary period,” wrote Patterson. “He might have won the Republican nomination in any case, given the confluence of factors working in his favor. But one of his assets, certainly, was his press advantage.”
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com