The 1996 New Hampshire Republican Primary and Network News

Abstract

Content‐coded network newscasts are used to examine the relationship between news coverage and the daily New Hampshire poll standings of the leading 1996 Republican candidates in the weeks before the primary. Negative network news evaluations of Patrick Buchanan actually led to improvements in his tracking poll standings in subsequent days, indicating strong hostility to national media perspectives among many New Hampshire Republicans sympathetic to Buchanan.

The 2004 New Hampshire Democratic Primary and Network News

“…The one notable exception-Bill Clinton in 1992-involved far more scandal coverage during the preprimary period than in other contests examined by researchers (Farnsworth and Lichter 1999, 2002, 2003cMoore 1984).…”

“…Subsequent primaries, though, revealed more pronounced national media effects,including the 1980 Republican and Democratic Primary contests in New Hampshire (Moore 1984), the 1992 and 2000 Democratic contests Lichter 1999, 2003c), and the 1996 GOP Granite State primary (Farnsworth and Lichter 2002).…”

“…Patterson 1980Patterson , 1994. Network television news coverage of several recent primaries triggered such effects for most of the leading candidates, including the 1992 and 2000 Democratic and the 1996 Republican contests (Farnsworth and Lichter 1999, 2002, 2003c. One candidate who departed from this pattern was Bill Clinton, who finished second in the 1992 Democratic contest in the wake of controversies over Gennifer Flowers's allegations of an extramarital affair with the governor and Clinton's attempts to avoid military service in Vietnam (Ceaser and Busch 1993).…”

“…In the 1996 New Hampshire Republican primary, for example, negative televised evaluations of Pat Buchanan actually led to improved standings in subsequent tracking polls (Farnsworth and Lichter 2002). An inverse relationship between coverage and poll standings was found for Democratic candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley in 2000 and Paul Tsongas, the winner of the 1992 New Hampshire Primary Lichter 1999, 2003c).…”

Context and Sources in Broadcast Television Coverage of the 2004 Democratic Primary

“…Patterson (1993), in his book Out of Order, noted that political science literature invariably supports the notion that media coverage of the front-runner influences voter perceptions about presidential candidate viability. Farnsworth and Lichter (1999, 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c examined the relationship between network and newspaper coverage prior to the 1996 presidential primary election and daily tracking polls and found that favorable news coverage and editorials elevated a candidate's poll standing in New Hampshire primaries. However, these Farnsworth and Lichter studies differed in their results from studies by Moore and Hofstetter (1982) of the 1972 and 1976 primaries and by Moore (1984) of the 1980 primaries.…”