More Americans Support Bernie Sanders than Donald Trump, but Trump Gets 23 Times as much TV Coverage

Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders (AP photos: Mary Schwalm, Charlie Riedel)

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is right there with Donald Trump in terms of political support, but you wouldn’t know it from the enormous gulf in media coverage between the two presidential candidates.

 

First, to the polling: RealClearPolitics (RCP) crunched data from some of the biggest polling groups, such as NBC/Wall Street Journal and CBS/New York Times.

 

RCP’s average showed Sanders with 32.2% support among voters, and Trump with just slightly more at 33%. But Gallup’s party affiliation numbers showed 44% of those surveyed identify with Democrats, compared to 42% of Republicans, giving a bit more weight to the Sanders supporters.

 

Now, on to the media attention …

 

Media Matters for America reported that Trump in 2015 had received 234 minutes of coverage among NBC, CBS and ABC evening news broadcasts, while Sanders got only 10 minutes of coverage from the Big Three. ABC gave Sanders the least amount of time, with only 20 seconds of stories broadcast about the Sanders campaign on World News Tonight. Those figures don’t include reports about events such as debates in which all candidates participate.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

 

To Learn More:

Polls: 2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination (RealClearPolitics)

Polls: 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination (RealClearPolitics)

Report: ABC World News Tonight Has Devoted 81 Minutes to Trump, One Minute to Sanders (Media Matters for America)

Fox News Tries to Hijack Republican Primary; Pushes Trump Most, Followed by Huckabee, Perry and Jindal (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley, AllGov)

Trump Wins the Summer Soap Opera, While Favorites Bush, Walker and Rubio Wait in the Wings (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Comments

Michael Brown 8 years ago
"Trump in 2015 had received 234 minutes of coverage among NBC, CBS and ABC evening news broadcasts" Why? Because 233 minutes of it was negative.

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