Now that the voting is over, I want to compare the way that the two campaigns were run.
Some years ago, I read an analysis that looked at media coverage of political campaigns. The analysis found that when reporters covered candidates who were leading in the polls, they would say that the operation was going smoothly, staffers were cheerful, with all the elements working in concert to provide a winning message.
But the reports of losing campaigns invariably found lots of missteps, gaffes, disunity among staffers, money woes, and lack of a consistent and coherent message.
What was interesting was that these reporters’ perceptions were mainly correlated with the candidate’s standing in the polls, not any real differences in the facts of the campaigns. So when a losing candidate started to get ahead in the polls, suddenly his or her campaign became the smooth one and the previously smooth winning campaign became the target of innuendo about all kinds of internal problems.
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