John, you were saying?
![[Image: idate_Coverage_the_Last_Week_of_the_Campaign.png]](http://www.journalism.org/files/legacy/u29/idate_Coverage_the_Last_Week_of_the_Campaign.png)
http://www.journalism.org/2012/11/19/fin...aign-2012/
Obama Enjoys Surge in Positive Coverage the Last Week of the Race; Attention to Romney Drops
In the final week of the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama enjoyed his most positive run of news coverage in months, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Only during the week of his nominating convention was the treatment in the press more favorable.
Much of that surge in positive coverage, the data suggest, was tied to Obama’s strategic position, including improving opinion polls and electoral math, rather than directly to positive assessments of Obama’s response to Superstorm Sandy. The storm, however, appeared to reduce the amount of attention focused on Mitt Romney and may well have influenced public attitudes about the president.
During this final week, from October 29 to November 5, positive stories about Obama (29%) outnumbered negative ones (19%) by 10 points.[1] A week earlier, negative coverage of Obama had exceeded positive by 13 points. The final week of the campaign marked only the second time in which positive stories about Obama outnumbered negative dating back to late August.
For Mitt Romney in the final week, the tone of coverage remained largely unchanged from the previous two weeks. Negative stories in the press outnumbered positive ones 33% to 16%.
But Romney may have suffered in final days from the press focusing less on him relative to his opponent. After receiving roughly identical levels of coverage for most of October, in the last week of campaigning Obama was a significant presence in eight out of 10 campaign stories compared with six in 10 for Romney-one of the biggest disparities in any week after Labor Day.
The changes seen in mainstream coverage did not carry through to social media, however, and each of the three major social media platforms offered a different sense of the candidates. On Twitter, for example, the conversation about Romney in the last week was the most positive of any during the general election while Obama’s was basically unchanged. On blogs, it was Obama who saw a surge in favorable conversation. On Facebook, the tenor changed relatively little in the final days.
The study tracked the coverage in mainstream news and the conversation in social media in the final two weeks of the campaign (October 22 to November 5) and is a follow-up report to one released by PEJ on November 2 that went to the eve of the third debate.[1]
![[Image: large-1.png]](http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2013/11/large-1.png)
