“Romney Hood” Gets More Media Coverage Than “Obamaloney”

LexisNexis® Legal & Professional released an analysis of national media coverage data that shows that the catchphrase “Romney Hood” used by the Obama campaign has earned more coverage than the “Obamaloney” catchphrase deployed by the Romney campaign, leading into the two parties’ national nominating conventions. 

 

Data collected by LexisNexis also show that Mitt Romney and President Obama have earned near equal amounts of coverage once it became clear that Romney was the presumptive Republican nominee. However, Romney has seen a spike in coverage (6 percent) after naming Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. Additionally, results show that in advance of their occurrence, the Republican Convention has garnered more coverage nationally than the Democratic Convention. 

Print and broadcast media, blogs, Twitter® and other coverage demonstrating these and the catchphrase trends were gathered and assessed using the nexis.com® service – winner of the 2012 CODiE Award for Best Political Information Resource. LexisNexis will be present as provider of news and information to attending media and editorial professionals at both the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Aug. 27-30, and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, Sept. 4-6. 

Catchphrases

 

Repetition of key messages and taglines via the media and online are important to any campaign in making a desired impression on voters; the 2012 U.S. Presidential race is no different. For example, LexisNexis discovered that:

• In the weeks following the “Romney Hood” and “Obamaloney” back and forth, the “Romney Hood” line used by the Obama campaign was covered nearly 96 percent more than the “Obamaloney” phrase used by the Romney team.

 

Candidates

 

Consistent exposure of a candidate through the media is fundamental to a political campaign, and LexisNexis research shows that:

• With more than 4,000 pieces of coverage each, Romney and Obama were getting about the same amount of coverage nationally since June 28, 2012, up until August 20, 2012, when Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate, and coverage for the Romney campaign increased. Since that time, Romney has earned 6 percent more coverage nationally than Obama.

 

Conventions

The conventions themselves offer a chance for the media to cover the Presidential race and, by extension, deliver exposure of candidates to voters. Local angles in the markets where events are taking place, who is or is not speaking, issues expected to be a focal point or ignored, profiles of delegates, funding and much more—each offers storylines for the media to report.

• With more than 2,500 pieces of coverage in the month leading up to both conventions, the Republican National Convention has earned 38 percent more overall media coverage than has the Democratic National Convention.
  
  

Methodology

 

Using Nexis® Media Coverage Analyzer, LexisNexis conducted a search of U.S. media coverage of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, key catch phrases “Romney Hood” and “Obamaloney,” and both the Republican and Democratic national conventions on the nexis.com database, which consists of more than 26,000 newspapers, magazines, journals, wire transcripts, blogs and Twitter® feeds. The database includes media from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and full text of the top 99 U.S. newspapers, as well as abstracts of The Wall Street Journal. 

Information on the two candidates by name was searched for each full name, starting June 28 and ending Aug. 20, 2012. Information on the catchphrases and conventions was searched for in a timeframe starting Aug. 1 and ending Aug. 20, 2012. For the purposes of this analysis, full weeks are defined as Sunday through Saturday. Counts of media mentions by week were converted to percentage of coverage volume. Multiple mentions of a single candidate within a single article were counted as one.