Can-Pain 2012: Not Just the Ads Were Negative

Pew Research out with survey showing just how negative the campaign coverage has been this year.   They break it down with various numbers and charts,  before and after the debates, and so on.  Did the mean seem to favor a candidate?  Not really.  Obama got more positive coverage in the "horse race" aspect of coverage--but that's natural, since he has been perceived as winning, or at worst tied, for months.  In what Pew calls the "non-horse race" coverage the positive/negative ratio for the two men was almost precisely the same--with 32% of the stories, in each case, in the negative area. So much for the "liberal media."

Too much to summarize but some other findings, many of them in the "duh" category:  MSNBC even more negative re: Romney than Fox re: Obama;  there was actually a little less focus on the horse race--and the economy--than in 2008; coverage of the debates focused much more on who won than issues discussed;  in the social media world,  "the tone of the conversation was most negative on Twitter."