Palin-Biden debate draws in 73 million
October 4, 2008
Numbers on par with TV audience for a Super Bowl
More than 73 million people watched the vice-presidential debate between Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday night, making it the most watched vice-presidential debate in U.S. history and very likely the second-most-watched political debate of any kind.
It ranks behind only the Oct. 28, 1980, debate between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, which logged nearly 81 million viewers.
Palin Steps Up and Stuns
October 3, 2008
Expectations for the debate could not have been lower for Sarah Palin. The last of the Katie Couric interviews last night showed her at a loss to describe any U.S. Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade with which she disagreed. That set off a new round of finger-pointing and guffaws among the MSM.
And they have not been alone. For some time conservatives have been glum, if not despondent, about Palin’s abilities. Questions remained whether she was up for the job or merely had been “freaked out” by poor handling by the McCain team.
The day had been another roller-coaster for the McCain camp. John McCain finally raised concern earlier in the day about Gwen Ifill’s upcoming “favorable” (actually laudatory) book about Barack Obama and the potential conflict of interest. Then the McCain camp projected an air of bravado — Palin would be going on the attack. That was just before word filtered out, later confirmed by a media conference call, that the McCain campaign was “pulling back” in Michigan and faced a “shrinking” electoral map.
Palin questions McCain’s concession of Michigan
October 3, 2008
Sarah Palin questioned Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s decision to abandon efforts to win Michigan, a campaign move she only learned about Friday morning when she read it in the newspapers.
In an interview with Fox News Channel Friday, the Alaska governor said she was disappointed that the McCain campaign decided to stop competing in Michigan. In an indication that the vice presidential candidate had not been part of the decision, she said she had “read that this morning and I fired off a quick e-mail” questioning the move.
“Todd and I, we’d be happy to get to Michigan and walk through those plants of the car manufacturers,” Palin said, referring to her husband. “We’d be so happy to get to speak to the people in Michigan who are hurting because the economy is hurting.”
Biden and Palin hail from 2 states having little in common
September 29, 2008
His state is the oldest in the nation. Hers is among the newest.
His state is so small, it begs the question: DelaWhere? Hers is the largest, so big that 288 little Delawares could fit within Alaska’s borders.
The country’s choices for the next vice president - Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin - couldn’t hail from more opposite ends of the American spectrum - politically, culturally and geographically.
It’s not just that his state has voted for the Democrat in the last four presidential elections while hers went for the Republican. Or even his short, 82-mile train ride to Washington compared with her short distance from Russia.
It’s that his state has dog parks. Her state’s official sport is dog mushing.
“Alaska is the frontier,” said Frank Popper, a land use planner who teaches at Princeton and Rutgers universities. “I’m sure from the point of view of someone who is truly Alaskan, Delaware feels like it’s Europe.
“These are the spiritual descendents of Daniel Boone, who generally said when he could see people across the valley at night because of their fires it was time to move on.”
Palin and Biden may not be trying to represent their states in terms of the personas they’re projecting on the campaign trail, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute in Washington. Biden has spent significant time emphasizing his small town, blue-collar Scranton, Pa., roots while Palin could just as easily be from a small town in Iowa.
But the different worlds they have represented throughout their adult lives inform who they are and their politics. That’s perhaps even more so the case for Palin, whose widely circulated image with her hunting trophy - a slain caribou - has become an iconic symbol of her life on the wild frontier.
Debate analysis is in
September 29, 2008
Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama were more frustrated than those of Sen. John McCain at the conduct of the first presidential debate in Mississippi, according to the “Citizens Media Scorecard.” By wide margins, they were more dissatisfied with the narrow scope of the foreign policy questions chosen by moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS.
The Citizens Media Scorecard was an online rating of the debate and the media’s performance by a panel of more than 4,600 volunteers conducted by the nonpartisan media reform group Free Press and analyzed by Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the Tyndall Report, which has monitored network television news for the last 20 years.
Where’s China?
Obama supporters in the panel tended to complain about the absence of questions on Africa (80% vs. 58% of McCain’s) and China (74% vs.64%); and on the foreign policy issues of global warming (89% vs. 42%); human rights abuses (85% vs. 57%); AIDS and other diseases (86% vs. 55%); and globalized trade (76% vs. 56%).
The supporters of both candidates gave high marks to Lehrer’s selection of questions about four major regions: At least 70% of each group scored him as “just right” for the time he devoted to Afghanistan and Pakistan; to Iran; to Russia and NATO; and to Iraq.
The Economy
Lehrer’s decision to depart from the designated foreign policy topic of the debate and include questions about the financial crisis drew little criticism. More than half of each group of supporters rated the time he spent on high finance (50% of Obama’s supporters vs. 50% of McCain’s), federal spending (52% vs. 56%) and taxation (58% vs. 56%) as “just right.” Many Obama supporters complained that Lehrer’s economic questions did not also cover poverty (86% vs. 38%), Social Security (83% vs. 63%) and unemployment (77% vs. 46%) as well.
“Obama’s supporters appeared to seek a more wide-ranging discussion of the problems facing the United States,” said Andrew Tyndall, who designed the survey. “McCain’s followers were more likely to focus on the key issues of war and peace and terrorism.”
Mostly High Marks for Lehrer
There was little difference between the two groups of partisans in their assessment of Lehrer’s performance. Fewer than 10% of the overall panel said he did a “poor job” (36% excellent, 54% adequate). His attempts to have the candidates interact without his intervention may have gone overboard; on a spectrum from “too controlling” to “too freewheeling,” the panel tended to come down on the side of freewheeling (27% vs. 4%). Lehrer received high marks from the whole panel for being extremely plainspoken (47%) and being unbiased (77%).
Among those few who complained that Lehrer played favorites, McCain supporters (21% vs. 11% of Obama’s) were more likely to complain about their candidate’s treatment. Those complaints of bias aside, McCain’s supporters were more positive about the debate overall. They were more likely to find it helpful in deciding how to vote (46% vs. 25%) and in learning about their own candidate’s positions (61% vs. 42%).
Although Free Press extended outreach to all parts of the political spectrum, of the volunteers who participated in the scorecard, Obama supporters vastly outnumbered McCain’s. To correct for that imbalance, these results have been reported by contrasting the ratings of the two groups rather than combining them, which would have drowned out the Republican perspective. Consisting of volunteers rather than a random sample, these results cannot be projected to the population at large.
Broadcast TV Rated ‘Poor’
McCain and Obama supporters alike tended to be more critical of the quality of election coverage by traditional broadcast news sources. Nearly 7 out of 10 McCain supporters (69%) rated election coverage by national network news as “poor” (versus 52% of Obama supporters). Nearly 7 out of 10 Obama supporters (68%) counted as “poor” local television news (versus 58% of McCain supporters).
But they were split on their assessment of commercial radio. Of McCain’s supporters, 58% rated commercial radio coverage as either “adequate” or “excellent.” Obama supporters overwhelming ranked commercial radio coverage as “poor” (78%).
The two groups of supporters tended to watch the debate on different outlets. MSNBC (27%) and PBS (26%) were the favorite outlets for Obama partisans. Fox News Channel was the favorite for fully 43% of the McCain voters in the panel. Free Press continues to recruit volunteers from across the political spectrum for subsequent debates. “Perhaps Fox News will give us a hand with some outreach,” Tyndall suggested.
Andrew Tyndall and Free Press experts are available to comment on these results. To schedule an appearance, contact Jen Howard at (703) 517-6273 or press@freepress.net.
For more information, visit www.RatetheDebates.org.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE from FREEPRESS.NET
Date: September 27, 2008
Contact: Jen Howard, Free Press, (703) 517-6273
NEW YORK
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Learn more at www.freepress.net
The Tyndall Report has monitored the weekday nightly newscasts of three broadcast networks since 1987. This is Andrew Tyndall’s sixth cycle keeping tabs on TV news coverage of the presidential election campaigns. Go to tyndallreport.com to follow each day’s story rundown and search its database of almost 9,000 network news videostreams, including more than 1100 stories, appearing on the network news on Campaign 2008.
