How Groperzenegger Won

An study by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an independent policy research center based at UC Berkeley and Stanford, sheds some light on the enormous media attention given to the governor-elect during the campaign. Snippets:

Recall news focused primarily on Schwarzenegger's campaign By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 13 October 2003 BERKELEY – California's Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger benefited from lopsided media attention during the pivotal first weeks of his campaign, according to a study by a policy research center at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. The study examined more than 1,500 news stories written by staff writers for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News that appeared between the week of Aug. 6, when major candidates entered the race, and Oct. 6, the Monday before election day. It found that just under three-quarters of the stories focused on candidate Schwarzenegger as their subject. "Californians were bombarded with messages about Schwarzenegger's candidacy, cast in a positive or negative light, for most of the campaign," said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy who headed the study. "Soon thereafter, his (Schwarzenegger's) support rose from 20 percent to over 40 percent of those polled." The media review analyzed total story counts, the percentage of reporting on the six major candidates, weekly trends in candidate coverage, and the coverage of policy issues such as the state budget, education and child health insurance. The New York Times reported on Schwarzenegger in 87 percent of its 164 stories appearing over the frenzied two-month campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Gov. Gray Davis. The actor's wife, Maria Shriver, was discussed with about the same frequency as Green Party candidate Peter Camejo, Fuller said. The study also found that Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, was largely eclipsed by the disproportionate coverage of the actor, as well as by reporting on Davis during the final two weeks of the race. The Los Angeles Times offered more balanced reporting on the major candidates, according to Fuller, For example, 61 percent of the paper's articles informed readers about Bustamante, compared to 44 percent of the stories appearing in The New York Times. The San Jose Mercury News covered legislative activity in Sacramento dealing with such issues as expanding child health insurance, granting new civil rights to gays, and permitting immigrants to obtain a driver's license. This yielded more coverage for Davis and relatively less for Schwarzenegger.

We're not sure exactly what the results mean, given that the California media presented campaign stories more proportional to the candidates' popularity than did the NY Times. Is the implication that Californians tend to rely more on news from New York (probably not), or that maybe the study should have also looked at other media sources such as TV and radio (most likely)?