Elections and the Media: The Supply Side

Creators: Patty, John W.

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Abstract

This paper examines the role of the media in modern elections. In particular, the media industry is included in a traditional spatial voting framework. Consumers are modeled as random utility maximizers, and predictions are obtained, including an incumbency/celebrity advantage, emphasis of news concerning front-runners and unknown candidates, higher levels of coverage of volatile issues, higher levels of horse-race coverage in heterogeneous electorates, and lower levels of issue coverage in competitive news markets. The paper also includes a brief, cursory look at media coverage of Perot's candidacies in 1992 and 1996, illustrating how the model can be used "out of the box."

Additional Information

The author thanks D. Roderick Kiewiet for the suggestion of this title. This paper has previously been presented as "Address Models of the Media in Political Science." The author wishes to acknowledge many helpful conversations with R. Michael Alvarez, Chris Anderson, Fred Boehmke, Kim Border, Rhett Brown, Sean Gailmard, Garrett Glasgow, Angela Hung, Richard McKelvey, Tom Palfrey, and Roberto Weber. The support of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Caltech is also gratefully acknowledged. This paper would have been impossible without the comments and support of Alison Monahan. All errors, omissions, and outright lies are the responsibility of the author, of course.

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