Reporting "The Polls" in 2004

Media reports of polls indicate how well public opinion pollshave been integrated into campaign coverage. This article examineshow polls were used in 2004. Although there were relativelylimited methodological changes in how polls were conducted in2004, there were changes in how the polls were treated in themedia. Americans in 2004 were subjected to intense debates aboutpolls and to as much reporting about "the polls" as there wasof the polls themselves. The discussion of "the polls" in 2004included claims of electability during the Democratic nominatingprocess, increased reporting about methodological issues, andheightened political criticisms of "the polls." The articleconcludes with a discussion of the current state and the futureof news polling.     

Casting the 2000 U.S. Presidential Primaries

This article examines the 2000 U.S. presidential primaries as a case study in "casting" by early journalistic and polling choices. Casting is a strong series of candidate expectations expressed by news organizations early in campaigns. Often casting choices are based significantly on early polls (and campaign cash), and sometimes they can become self-fulfilling prophecies as campaign coverage and elections move forward.

The author argues that casting occurs in regularly scheduled and significant news stories. The news choices fulfill both organizational needs and the routines of dramatic storytelling. The researcher examined polls and news coverage in the primary season from January 1 until March 14, 2000. News coverage was determined by daily keyword searches on Lexis-Nexis for each of nine candidates. The researcher tracked not only overall news coverage, but also news attention per polling point. Casting was clear: Al Gore and George W. Bush as extensively-covered front runners, a "serious candidates" field covered more extensively than their initial poll numbers would seem to justify, and nearly invisible "immediate also-rans."     

A Critical Analysis of Australian Television Coverage of Election Opinion Polls

Much recent attention has focused on the nature and possibleeffects of media coverage of opinion polls. Accordingly, thisarticle reports the results of a detailed critical analysisof Victorian television news coverage of election opinion pollsduring the 1980 Australian federal election campaign. Five aspectsof the coverage were analyzed: its extent, focus, completeness,accuracy, and critical balance. The results of the study indicatethat the coverage was seriously, perhaps irredeemably, flawed     

Can a Poll Affect Perception of Candidate Traits?

During presidential elections, poll results frequently are presentedin the news. Reporters use these polls to tell the public whatit thinks about the presidential candidates. We argue that pollingresults tell the public what it should think about the presidentialcandidates as well. This study outlines how a character traitthat is not usually used to assess presidential candidates wasput into play during the 2004 presidential campaign. By repeatedlyascribing "stubbornness" to incumbent president George W. Bush,Democratic challenger John Kerry may have prompted this trait’sinclusion in a Los Angeles Times summer 2004 survey. The poll’sevidence that the public saw Bush as more stubborn than Kerrythen produced an attribute agenda-setting effect that strengthenedthe link between that term and Bush. Using data from the NationalAnnenberg Election Survey, we argue that the news coverage ofthis Los Angeles Times poll increased the salience of the trait"stubborn" in assessing President George W. Bush during Juneof the 2004 presidential campaign.     

THE SHORT-TERM EFFECT OF ELECTION POLLS ON FOREIGN EXCHANGE RATES: THE 1988 CANCDIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

Polls do not simply measure public opinion; they also providevital information that the public can use to form opinions andto make decisions. Using multiple regression analysis, the authorsfound that published polls had a powerful impact on the valueof the Canadian dollar during the 1988 Canadian federal election.This appears to have been due to the unprecedented importanceof economic issues in the federal campaign, the distinctivepositions taken by the major political parties with respectto the U.S.-Canadian Free Trade Agreement, and to the proliferationof "horse-race" polls in the media. These results have implicationsfor understanding the behavior of other elite groups, such asfinancial contributors and volunteer campaign workers, who mayalso use published horse-race polls to handicap election outcomes.     

Of Polls, Mountains: U.S. Journalists and Their Use of Election Surveys

Polls are a prominent feature of U.S. election news coverage.Although polls are used to explain voter opinion, they are employedmostly to fuel horse-race coverage and to craft images consistentwith the candidates’ positions in the race. Moreover,U.S. journalists sometimes misinterpret polls by slighting thepossibility that changes in candidate preference are the resultof survey error rather than real change. On balance, U.S. journalists’dependence on polls adversely affects the quality of Americanelection coverage.     

Toward an Open-Source Methodology: What We Can Learn from the Blogosphere

During the 2004 election campaign, millions of political enthusiastsdownloaded poll data on the Internet, while "Weblogs" provideda new forum for commentary on survey methodology. At the sametime, traditional public opinion surveys came under pressurefrom declining cooperation, contact, and coverage rates, andmany automated and Internet surveys began to proliferate. Thisarticle provides some examples of "blog" commentary on automatedand Internet polls and then explores the lessons to be learnedfrom the spirit of innovation and openness of the Internet inevaluating new survey methods such as automated polls and thoseconducted over the Internet.     

The Role of Corporations in the 1980 U.S. Congressional Elections*

The issues of whether and how corporate campaign donations affect the operation of American elections have recently become the focus of public and scholarly debate. Using Federal Election Commission campaign finance data, this analysis identifies a link betwren contributions from business PACs and candidate success in the 1980 U.S. congressional elections. Findings also confirm an association between corporate support and legislative voting for candidates re-elected in 1980. Candidates heavily supported by business PACs during the campaign did better at the polls and were more likely to vote conservatively if elected than those not so strongly endorsed by economic interests. Results are discussed in terms of various theories of the state as well as their relevance to potential election finance reforms.     

POLLING ON THE ISSUES PUBLIC OPINION AND THE NUCLEAR FREEZE

Throughout the first term of the Reagan administration, thenuclear freeze movement headlined the news and scored numerouspolitical victories. Hundreds of state and local governments,as well as the U.S. House of Representatives, passed resolutionsin support of the freeze. Public opinion polls played a majorrole in the debate, as the media and freeze advocates citednumerous polls indicating overwhelming public support for theinitiative. Yet a comprehensive and detailed examination ofnational polls reveals that public support for the freeze cameheavily qualified. While Americans expressed strong supportfor the basic concept of a freeze, they expressed doubts aboutthe possibility of a verifiable and balanced freeze agreement.Furthermore, the public doubted that the Soviet Union genuinelydesired such an agreement. Most surprisingly, the public didnot pay much attention to the debate. Few Americans claimedto know or care much about the freeze initiative, and fewerstill felt positively toward the political activists behindthe freeze.     

The Accuracy of the National Preelection Polls in the 2004 Presidential Election

The 2004 presidential election campaign provided a venue fora wide variety of polling, and it was not without its controversies.In the end, the final estimates of the preelection polls, thebread and butter of the polling industry, were very good atsuggesting it would be a close race, with Bush the likely winner.In historical perspective, the overall performance was aboveaverage for the period since 1956. Issues raised in the medialeading up to the end of the campaign and the final estimates,however, created some controversy, especially about the likelyvoter methodology used by different organizations. There werealso some anomalies at the end of the campaign as some firmsand collaborators ended up producing different estimates ofthe outcome depending on likely voter definitions or the modeof data collection.     

Classifying Undecided Voters in Pre-Election Polls

The treatment of "don't know", "no opinion," or other nsonsubstantiveresponses is a problem in many consumer research surveys. Thispaper looks at the problem in the context of 1980 presidentialelection opinion polls. During the campaign, a relatively largeproportion of those interviewed said that they were undecidedas to whom they planned to vote for. Discriminant analysis isused to allocate undecided voters to candidates. The methodis validated by a postelection follow-up survey.     

Press and TV as Opinion Resources in Presidential Campaigns

A comparison of campaign news in two successive presidentialelections reveals major deficiencies in information supply.Newspaper audiences, even more than television viewers, receiveconfusing, heavily negative information which makes candidateappraisal difficult. Incumbency of one candidate does not leadto substantially greater emphasis on public policy issues andprofessional qualifications. A pattern of heavy stress on personalcharacteristics and daily campaign events prevails in all sources.Data come from content analysis of nearly 10,000 campaign storiesfrom network television news and 20 U.S. daily newspapers.     

News Framing and Cueing of Issue Regimes: Explaining Clinton's Public Approval in Spite of Scandal

During the period of exceedingly critical news coverage surroundingthe Monica Lewinsky debacle, President Bill Clinton's job approvalratings were at some of the highest levels they reached duringhis tenure in office. Given this public response, many pollsters,pundits, and scholars argued that news coverage of the scandalmust have been largely irrelevant to the public. Our view countersthese claims by advancing a theory that recognizes that citizens'political preferences are influenced substantially by framesand cues provided by news media. To test our ideas, we drawupon three types of data, all from January 1993 to March 1999:(a) a longitudinal content analysis of major news media, (b)a time-trend of opinion polls on presidential job approval,and (c) monthly estimates of real disposable personal income,seasonally adjusted. Analyses reveal that news media emphasisupon and framing of certain issue regimes—to the framingof the scandal in terms of the strategic motives of conservativeelites.     

Horse-Race Journalism: Reporting the Polls in the 1976 Presidential Election

Reporting of public opinion polls conformed to a horse-raceimage of campaign reporting during the 1976 presidential election.Journalists avoided prediction, reported segments of the sample,selectively compared results, emphasized spectacles, questionedthe validity of polling, made a few mistakes, and ignored certaindata in their reporting. All these activities reinforced theimage of elections as a sporting event.     

THE EMERGENCE OF BANDWAGON EFFECTS: A THEORY

Previous explanations of bandwagons from election polls have exclusively emphasized conformity causes. We propose, in addition, "indirect' causes, in which election predictions first affect key actors, influencing their decisions concerning financial support, volunteer work, or endorsements. These decisions then produce major campaign alterations that influence the voters and alter the election outcome. Our addition clarifies anomalous bandwagon research findings and directs attention to the possibility of bandwagon feedback on subsequent elections. If the same forecasters create frequent bandwagon effects, their credibility should increase as a result of enhanced accuracy. But increased credibility should in turn increase the self-fulfilling tendency of their subsequent forecasts. Such deviation-amplifying feedback would permit polls to produce a highly significant, and expanding, influence on elections.     

Likely (and Unlikely) Voters and the Assessment of Campaign Dynamics

Only in recent years has the "likely voter" technology beenextended to polls well in advance of an election. In the caseof the 2000 U.S. presidential election, CNN/USA Today/Galluptracking polls indicated considerable fluctuations in likelyvoter preferences, greater than among the larger pool of registeredvoters surveyed. This article explores how Gallup’s likelyvoter model exaggerates the reported volatility of voter preferencesduring the campaign. Much of the reported variation in candidatepreference reported by Gallup in that election is not due toactual voter shifts in preference but rather to changes in thecomposition of Gallup’s likely voter pool. The findingshighlight dangers of relying on samples of likely voters whenpolling well before Election Day.     

CAMPAIGN ADVERTISEMENTS VERSUS TELEVISION NEWS AS SOURCES OF POLITICAL ISSUE INFORMATION

Relative contributions of television news and campaign advertisingto U.S. voters' knowledge about candidate issue differencesare compared. Empirical comparisons are based on interview datafrom six campaign surveys of voters, in various election settingsfrom 1984 to 1992. In hierarchical regression analyses, aftercontrols for demographic and political interest variables, measuresof attention to television news consistently account for a significantincrement of slightly more than 2 percent of variance in issueknowledge. Parallel measures representing attention to candidates'televised advertisements produce a much more variable patternin terms of variance explained in knowledge. Usually the effectsof advertisements are less than those of news, and sometimesthey are nonsignificant; but in one hotly contested ideologicalrace the informative effect attributable to advertisements exceedsthat of TV news. These patterns hold up after further controlsfor other media use variables, including newspaper reading.     

Testing the Permanence of the Permanent Campaign: An Analysis of Presidential Polling Expenditures, 1977 2002

Many presidential observers argue that the modern White Houseis the site of more-or-less permanent campaigning. In a recentPOQ piece, Murray and Howard (2002) [Public Opinion Quarterly66:527–558] explore one indicator of the "permanent campaign,"the extent to which Presidents Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush,and Clinton commissioned independent opinion polls and focusgroups to assist in policymaking and political maneuvering.Murray and Howard suggest that while a sophisticated pollingoperation has been institutionalized in the White House, thereis substantial variation in how much a president uses this operation.In this article, we model presidential polling expendituresover time using monthly figures. We find that presidents donot vary significantly in the average amount spent per monthon polls. There are, however, two recurring patterns of variationwithin presidential administrations: Presidents tend to spendsignificantly more on internal polling during the most intensemonths of a presidential reelection campaign; and polling expendituresincrease over the course of each presidential term. These findingssuggest that there are common forces (e.g., elections, naturaldecline in support) that have driven all presidents since Fordto poll.     

WAR PROGRAMMING: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War

The invasion of Iraq was justified to the American people by a sophisticated propaganda campaign that reflected a think tank's vision for a new foreign policy. One objective of this article is to set forth a theoretical argument for analyzing modern propaganda campaigns as a feature of mass-mediated discourse crafted by think tanks and highly organized claims makers. We propose that the current structure of policy and critique is now institutionalized and formatted as War Programming, which connects criticism within a narrative sequence, including critiques and reflections about journalistic failings. The scope of the action is so immense that it precludes and preempts its critique. The second objective is to show how the rationale for the invasion was developed as a "public conspiracy" over a decade by the members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The third aim of this article is to describe and clarify why the PNAC plans for Iraq and an imperialist foreign policy received very little news media coverage. Qualitative content analysis of news materials suggests that the news sources and media shared a logic and perspective about "timely and entertaining news." The PNAC plan was not publicized by the major news media because it fell outside the focus of the Bush administration's propaganda campaign to demonize Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein, who was held to be responsible for attacks on the United States. The implications of such a well-organized propaganda campaign for future news coverage of war are discussed.     

Strategy and Issue Framing: An Exploratory Analysis of Topics and Frames in Campaign 2004 Print News

This study refines the study of strategy and issue framing in campaign news. A content analysis of Campaign 2004 articles published in the New York Times (N = 267) from Labor Day to election day was conducted. Strategy and issue frames were observed in a topical architecture that included 8 campaign topics grouped into 3 categories: (a) Policy Issues, (b) Politics and Process, and (c) Personality. Also, strategy and issue frames were observed in stories containing metacoverage-stories that blend behaviors, products, and standards of the news media with 1 or more of the 8 campaign topics. As expected, stories that contained a salient Policy Issues topic tended to be issue framed, whereas stories with a salient Politics and Process topic tended to be strategy framed. Stories with a salient Personality topic tended to be issue framed. Metacoverage, salient in 9% of coverage, was most commonly combined with Personality topics in stories that were mainly issue framed. Implications for the study of framing in political communication are discussed.