Overview

The presidential campaign again proved to be the top story for the public and the media last week. Overall public interest is comparable to most previous primary election cycles, but well below the high mark set four years ago.

Last week, which included Super Tuesday contests in 10 states, 28% say they followed election news very closely, according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted March 8-11 among 1,005 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Similar to current results, in February 2004 about three-in-ten (29%) said they followed news about the presidential candidates very closely. In March 2000 and March 1996, about a quarter in each survey (26%) said they were following campaign news this closely shortly after Super Tuesday voting.

Still, interest and coverage were far below the week of Super Tuesday primaries in 2008, when 39% said they followed election news very closely. That year, both parties had contested races, including the high-profile fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination; 24 states voted on Feb. 5, 2008, that campaign’s Super Tuesday.

Coverage also was greater four years ago. Last week, election news accounted for 30% of coverage, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). The week of Super Tuesday in 2008, campaign coverage accounted for 55% of the newshole.

In early 2008, Democrats tracked election news following Super Tuesday much more closely than they did this year (47% very closely vs. 28% now). With only the GOP engaged in a primary fight this year, Republican interest stands about where it was four years ago (44% very closely in 2008 vs. 37% today). The same is true for independents (29% then, 26% now).

Understandably, the party without a primary contest generally follows a campaign less closely than the one that does at this point. In February 2004, when Democrats were choosing a candidate to challenge George W. Bush, Democrats (42%) were much more likely than Republicans (22%) or independents (25%) to say they were following campaign news very closely.

In March 1996, when Bill Clinton was running for reelection, the reverse was the case. At that point, Republicans (38%) were more likely to say they were following news about the candidates very closely than were Democrats (22%) or independents (19%).

Throughout much of 2011, interest in campaign coverage was comparable to interest in 2007. Interest rose steadily in early 2008 as the public and the media focused on the Clinton-Obama fight.

In the current campaign, 23% say they did not follow news about the candidates at all closely last week, a number higher than similar points in previous campaigns going back to 1992. That includes 22% of Democrats, 23% of independents and 15% of Republicans.

Mixed Ratings for Primary Campaign Coverage

The public has become increasingly critical of news organizations’ campaign coverage over the past two decades. Currently, about half (49%) rate media coverage of the campaign as excellent or good while about as many (45%) rate it as only fair or poor.

Four years ago, the balance tilted positive. More than half (55%) rated coverage as excellent or good just after Super Tuesday; 44% said it was only fair or poor. The positive numbers have edged downwards across partisan lines. At a comparable point in the 1992 campaign, 63% rated press coverage as excellent or good, while 34% said it was only fair or poor.

Just as they did four years ago, Republicans offer the most negative assessments of campaign coverage: 55% rate the job being done by news organizations as only fair or

poor, while 42% say it has been excellent or good. About a third of Democrats (35%) give the coverage a negative rating; about six-in-ten (59%) are more positive. Independents are divided (49% say excellent or good; 46% say only fair or poor).

In 2008, 52% of Republicans said the job the press was doing covering the campaign was only fair or poor, while 46% said the coverage was excellent or good. Democrats were much more praising: 66% rated the coverage as excellent or good; 33% rated it only fair or poor. Among independents, 53% offered a positive rating and 46% a negative one.

The Week’s News

While the presidential campaign topped the public’s news interest and media coverage, Americans also continued to closely track news about the nation’s economy.

Nearly two-in-ten (17%) say they followed news about the condition of the economy most closely. Economic news made up 7% of coverage. Just under four-in-ten (37%) say they followed news about the economy very closely, a level of interest that has shifted only slightly since the start of the year.

One-in-ten (10%) say their top story was the controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s crude comments about a woman who advocates requiring health care coverage for contraceptives, even for workers at certain religiously affiliated institutions. Twice as many women than men say this was their top story (14% vs. 7%), though men and women are about equally likely to say they followed this news very closely. Overall, 20% followed this story very closely.

Limbaugh’s comments and the controversy that followed came in the context of the ongoing debate over requirements for birth control coverage in the 2010 federal health care reform law. Though the overall health care debate accounted for 10% of coverage last week, most of that dealt with the fight over Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who had testified before a congressional panel. According to PEJ, the back and forth over Limbaugh – including President Obama’s comments – accounted for 8% of the week’s coverage.

One-in-ten (10%) say their top story was news about the international tensions over Iran’s nuclear program; 25% say they followed this news very closely. News about Iran’s nuclear program — and concerns raised by the U.S. and Israel — accounted for 7% of coverage.

Two other foreign stories attracted modest interest. Fewer than two-in-ten (17%) say they followed news about the political violence in Syria very closely; 6% say this was their top story. News about the ongoing violence in Syria made up 4% of coverage.

About one-in-ten (8%) very closely followed reports about the Russian elections and protests about their validity; 1% says this was the news they followed most closely. News about the elections made up 1% of coverage.

These findings are based on the most recent installment of the weekly News Interest Index, an ongoing project of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The index, building on the Center’s longstanding research into public attentiveness to major news stories, examines news interest as it relates to the news media’s coverage. The weekly survey is conducted in conjunction with The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, which monitors the news reported by major newspaper, television, radio and online news outlets on an ongoing basis. In the most recent week, data relating to news coverage were collected March 5-11, and survey data measuring public interest in the top news stories of the week were collected March 8-11, 2012 from a nationally representative sample of 1,005 adults. This report also includes material from a March 7-11 survey among 1,503 adults.

The News Interest Index is a weekly survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press aimed at gauging the public’s interest in and reaction to major news events. This project has been undertaken in conjunction with the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, an ongoing content analysis of the news.  The News Coverage Index catalogues the news from top news organizations across five major sectors of the media: newspapers, network television, cable television, radio and the internet.  Each week (from Monday through Sunday) PEJ compiles this data to identify the top stories for the week.  (For more information about the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, go to www.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/journalism.) The News Interest Index survey collects data from Thursday through Sunday to gauge public interest in the most covered stories of the week.

Results for this survey are based on telephone interviews conducted March 8-11, 2012, among a national sample of 1,005 adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (602 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 403 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 199 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older.

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the March 2011 Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample is also weighted to match current patterns of telephone status based on extrapolations from the 2011 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size within the landline sample. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Some of the analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted March 7-11, 2012, among a national sample of 1,503 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (900 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 603 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 310 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/politics/methodology/

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and nativity and region to parameters from the March 2011 Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status and relative usage of landline and cell phones (for those with both), based on extrapolations from the 2011 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size within the landline sample. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.

In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.