Polls, Expectations, and Elections by Richard Craig

Author:Richard Craig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books

Figure 5.2 Positive/Negative Portrayals of Bush and Dukakis throughout 1988 Campaign, by Week (includes dates of significant campaign events). Source: CBS News Archives.

Bush’s post-convention poll surge in 1988 provides the clearest example in this study of candidate portrayals changing dramatically based on poll standings. Figure 5.2 shows how Bush and Dukakis were portrayed week by week by CBS’s stories throughout the sampled period. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 show Bush’s poll standing each week superimposed upon his own portrayal figures and Dukakis’s portrayal figures, respectively.24

In Figure 5.2, it’s plain to see not only the importance of campaign events on CBS’s portrayals of both candidates, but also the role of polls in those portrayals. As Figure 5.2 shows, in spells the two candidates’ portrayals clearly run to opposites. Yet for a long stretch during the middle of the campaign—between the Republican convention and the second debate—neither candidate was portrayed positively. As shown in Figures 5.2 and 5.3, though he eventually won the election, during the campaign Bush was only portrayed positively during one three-week stretch after the second debate, when he also experienced a jump in the polls. (This might well have been due to the well-documented barrage of negative television commercials unleashed by the Bush campaign; reporters derided them, but they seemed to resonate with the public.) He was also portrayed negatively only in the early days of the campaign, when Dukakis had a large poll lead. More often than not, the balance of a week’s coverage of Bush was neutral—out of the 19 weeks of the campaign, Bush’s average portrayal was negative only two weeks, and positive only three.

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