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Abstract
As U.S. news outlets grapple with the challenges of delivering news in a digital era, journalists cover elections with tighter deadlines and fewer resources. Consequently, we are seeing an explosion in coverage of polls, which require little original reporting and attract readers through their “horse race” appeal. As the number of polls increases, news professionals are culling data from a wider spectrum of sources that vary in methodology and credibility. What remains unclear is how effective the news media are in providing polling context in their online coverage that is less limited by the space and time constraints of more traditional mediums. Utilizing the 2016 U.S. primaries, this exploratory study examines online news articles focused on polls to evaluate the quality of digital coverage across national news outlets.
Keywords: Campaigns and Elections; Content Analysis; Journalism; News Media; Political Communication
Notes
[1] In fact, 2012 results were so inaccurate that Gallup suspended its election polling during the 2016 primaries. See http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/gallup-poll-2016-pollsters-214493.
[2] Wire services were collapsed to the print category because they originate from wire reporters working within the domain of print. If a polling article appeared on the Web site of another news outlet in our sample but originated from the wire, we coded the outlet according to the wire service rather than the news outlet because the outlet is not responsible for the reporting. We eliminated duplicating wire cases to eliminate redundancy.
[3] Although response rates help distinguish a poll’s credibility, they are not included in AAPOR’s Standards for Minimal Disclosure; therefore, response rates are not included in the transparency index. It is worth noting that just 1 of 356 articles reported response rate.
[4] A limitation of the data worth noting is the violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption, as revealed by Levene’s test. This can be addressed in future research by expanding the sample of online articles from digital and broadcast news outlets and extending the analysis to other electoral contexts.