Election Coverage

Development of Election Coverage

From the colonial period through 1824, election campaigns in the United States were different from their current operation in U.S. civil society. Voting itself was limited to a select group of the male [Page 495]population, and newspapers reported candidate announcements, endorsement letters, and ideological tracts in line with the partisan views of the editor or publisher. Time and distance imposed considerable limitations on timely news distribution.

As voting rights were expanded in the early nineteenth century, more Americans began participating in the process. Nonetheless, there was very little electioneering for the press to cover as the candidates relied on their reputations and associations to attract voters. The election of 1828 between incumbent President John Quincy Adams (1825–29) and his Democratic challenger (and the ultimate victor) Andrew Jackson is considered the origin of presidential campaigning. Money, organization, rallies, parades, hard liquor, and vicious personal attacks became routine elements of this and later campaigns. The presidential election of 1848 between President Zachary Taylor (1849–50), a Whig, and Lewis Cass, a Democrat, was the first to be held nationwide on the same day with the results transmitted over telegraph wires. Through the latter half of the 19th century, newspapers became more entrenched in their partisan relationships.

Whistle-stop train tours, the traveling Lincoln/Douglas debates of the 1850s, and the pursuit of votes from the common people all combined to give rise to pack journalism campaign coverage by 1896. Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan traveled over 18,000 miles delivering up to 20 speeches a day, and he was accompanied by a pack of journalists requiring something new to report on a daily basis. By contrast, William McKinley conducted his managed campaign from the front porch of his home in Canton, Ohio. While the campaigns were becoming professional mass marketing affairs and politicians more adept at managing their public images, reporters had grown weary of repeatedly attending the same stump speeches day in and day out. The formation of the Associated Press with its exclusive rights to the Western Union telegraph wires also encouraged a more objective approach to reporting so as not to offend any of its thousands of patrons. Continuing as partisan mouthpieces was deemed beneath the dignity of most journalists by the late nineteenth century, and the standard of objective reporting parallel to paid partisan political advertising was born.

Pre-election polls became a staple of newspaper campaign reporting in the early twentieth century. Newspapers (and others) began conducting, publishing, and analyzing public opinion polls. Although seldom scientific in terms of sampling, these weekly and sometimes daily newspaper polls became a staple of election coverage.

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