European Media Favors Democrats More Than Does U.S. Media
We’ve all heard arguments about whether or not there’s a liberal bias in the U.S. media. Politics aside, I think the one truth most of us could agree on is that there’s a media bias toward stories that generate readers (and stories that are easy to file, which is where good PR comes in). At Biz360, we wanted to know how European media coverage of U.S. presidential candidates compares to U.S. coverage and discovered that not only do Democrats get more coverage at home, but the top Democrats appear in 10 percent more of total candidate coverage in Europe.
The following charts show European and U.S. media coverage, respectively, for U.S. presidential candidates and hopefuls over the past 30 days.
30 Days of Media Coverage
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dominate both U.S. and European coverage, but it would take further analysis to determine whether a media bias is at work. There’s inherent interest in that contest and that interest has a favorable result for the Democratic Party “greater media share. Recent barbs between Clinton and Obama have only tightened the media’s focus on the Democratic primaries. But unlike the GOP contest, there’s a clear media leader in both regions “Clinton maintains a five-point lead over Obama in Europe compared the two-point lead she currently has in the U.S.
The uncertainty of the next GOP presidential candidate has kept that story going, but with a shifting three-way race, predictions of the final showdown have caused each candidate to take a back seat at one time or another. Note that the top GOP candidate is third overall in both charts, but the gap between third and second is 24 points for European media and only half that for U.S. media. If the contest moves to a clear two-person race, the likely result is greater coverage for both candidates, which may help to close that gap.
Overall, European interest in U.S. presidential candidates is broad and the sixth and seventh place candidates have stronger media representation than you might guess. In a global economy with business and family ties around the world, other countries are following the U.S. closely and opinions abroad can affect decisions at home. Political candidates, corporate leaders and other high profile personalities can use traditional and social media analysis to understand these opinions and how they might impact their reputation.