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New York, November 5, 2008: With the results finally in, the media has some explaining to do regarding the large errors in their forecasts before the vote.

How was it possible that media coverage of the US Presidential Elections over the last weeks was so focussed on polling data which turned out to be so far away from the real result: 52:47. According to widely quoted media forecasts the actual result was not even considered as a possible option. The Media was even adamant about predicting that McCain would lose his own State Arizona, which in fact he won with a 9% lead.

"We need to change the way the media publishes and interprets polls," said Roland Schatz, President of Media Tenor International. "The last few decades have shown, not only in the US but in the rest of the world, that the horse race becomes central to Media coverage. So there needs to be an urgent debate about how the quality of reporting can be improved since it has such a record of being wrong." Given the influence the media has on the progress of a given election there is a responsibility to reflect on the impact of using erroneous polling data.

Focusing on polling results now shown to have been inaccurate led the media increasingly to part company with reality in the TV coverage of the Election Campaign: One possible explanation might be the atmosphere in Washington D.C., where most of the journalists from the U.S. and from abroad reside: Here 93% of the population voted for Obama, only 7% for McCain. In New York, the other media capital of the U.S., Obama scored 63% of the vote - quite a wide variation from the the national vote overall.

Media Tenor has invited David W. Moore, veteran Gallup Expert and author of the remarkable "The Opinion Makers - An Insider exposes the truth behind the polls" to be a keynote speaker at this years International Agenda Setting Conference in Zurich, Dec 3-5.

As Europe is facing their elections for the European Parliament and Germany standing 10 months ahead of its general Elections a discussion is needed how to guarantee certain standards throughout the campaigning process. ”Publishing ‘results´ while the election process is still running has to stop,” Schatz says. “I was irritated to see even Pew announcing results of so called exit-polls one week ahead of the actual election day. Voters need to be given a phase of at least 4 weeks in which they have access to the subject of choice rather than what others think to know who will be the winner as people tend to not be among the losers”.

The race in Germany 2002 was dominated 8 months by a clear defined “winner” Edmund Stoiber, reminds Schatz. In Month 9 due to the special media effect of the Oder-Floods turned a “landslide victory” for Edmund Stoiber into a success by the incumbent Gerhard Schröder by 6000 votes. Interpreting the detailed results of the 2008 US-Presidential Race the voters have been much closer than predicted.

Another learning point from this year´s Presidential Election Race: “After 2 years of advertising the outcome is impressively close keeping in mind the record breaking amount which was spent by the candidates. The traditional media coverage seems to matter more than the advertising experts had expected”, notes Schatz.


For the third time, International Media analysis company Media Tenor is offering a detailed analysis of the U.S. presidential campaign. TV news coverage of the leading Presidential contenders is scrutinized at a detailed level. “The methodology was developed 15 years ago and has been successfully used not only to analyze the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Presidential campaigns, but also for International politics,” Schatz explains. Media Tenor´s Presidential Campaign Watch focuses not only on candidate standings, but also on topics and sources, while adding an international perspective. Results of Media Tenor studies will be regularly published on MediaChannel.org. The full report will be available at the 9. International Agenda Setting Conference Dec 3-5 - www.agendasetting.com.

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