Some rehashed numbers, here. I’m recycling them in hopes of getting a broader context. For those new to the program, I’m going through the stats on my grueling 50 day binge of Washington Post Op-Ed pieces (I read Novak so that you can escape uninjured). Here are some numbers regarding the most popular topics in my 139 tracked editorials (2/14-5/6). Again, these are from a sampling of all the presidential race related pieces written in that time frame.

Reverend Wright-28

The Suicidal Nature of the Democratic Primary battle-11

Obama’s Condescension-4

Hillary’s Condescension-2

How Little We Know About Obama-4

Since I’m reading Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland,” I decided to focus on the “Liberal condescension” trope. Perlstein has posited that it is really the only way older conservatives know how to talk about liberals. He could be on to something. Oh, and of the 139 presidential race editorials, 49 were on the specific, pressing topics, of Reverend Wright, primary hand wringing, perceived liberal condescension, or Obama’s unknown quantities. And those are only the dumb topics I had time to chart this morning.

Big ups to the Huffington Post for adding us to their esteemed Off the Bus blogroll. I’m nerdily stoked on this. Here’s to hoping it bodes well for the future!

Primary Doom

A major trope in the 50 days (2/14-5/6) of WaPo presidential race editorial tracking was the “suicidal Dems” theme. I often found myself snickering at this repetitive, hyperbolic, primary handwringing. Of the 139 total Op-Ed pieces (28 in February, 47 in March, 52 in April, and 12 in May), 11 had the specific message of, “The Democrats are hurting themselves with this protracted primary battle.”  This very narrow topic comprised a whopping 8 percent of all tracked articles.

Now, intuitively, this thinking made sense. The fight between Clinton and Obama often seemed ugly and counter productive.  But these pundits did not make a compelling case for the damaging impact of an extended primary fight. More importantly, aren’t there other pertinent issues to harp on?

Some horserace pundits had serious addictions to this chicken little special. Most amusingly, David Broder (who led all pundits with 3 primary concern pieces) wrote about this topic on 4/20, and then wrote about the exact same thing on 4/24. Sigh, here are the listed doomsayers.

February

2/25 Bob Novak

March

3/6 Harold Meyerson

3/6 David Broder

3/6 Bob Novak

3/11 Richard Cohen

3/17 Bob Novak

April

4/15 E.J. Dionne Jr.

4/20 David Broder

4/24 David Broder

4/25 Eugene Robinson

Theme Counts

I tallied up some basic themes in my fifty day overview (2/14-5/6) of WaPo presidential race editorials. The first trope I charted was the “not getting enough scrutiny” topic. Allow me to explain. This is the somewhat common theme of stating that a candidate is getting a “free pass” from the media on a certain issue. What I love about this theme is the sadly predictable lack of pundit corroboration that comes with it. This claim is lazily thrown out there without even the easiest of Lexis Nexis searches to back it up. Anyway, here are the numbers for this theme, by month. Oh, and keep in mind that all the listed editorials have the same message of “X candidate is getting a free pass.”

February

Obama: 2/7 David Ignatius

March

Clinton: 3/8 Colbert I. King

McCain: 3/6 Harold Meyerson, 3/11 E.J. Dionne Jr

Obama: 3/3 Bob Novak

April

Clinton: 4/26 Colbert I. King Jr.

McCain: 4/1 Eugene Robinson, 4/22 Eugene Robinson

Obama: 4/4 Charles Krauthammer, 4/25 Geoff Garin

May

McCain: E.J. Dionne Jr.

So the counts are as follows: Clinton got two such themes, Obama got four, and McCain led with  five. Here’s the interesting wrinkle, though. Every column that posited a lack of McCain scrutiny did so with a specific attribution: The Democratic dogfight was to blame. In my next post, I’m tallying up how many WaPo columns were specifically dedicated to hand wringing over the Democratic nomination battle.

Tracking Negativity

In tracking the Washington Post themes, I wanted to know which politicians were receiving the most negative coverage, and when they were receiving it. I post my results with this caveat: Tracking negativity can be subjective. If a column stated that a candidate was either fundamentally flawed, or employing a bad strategy, I charted it as “Negative.” This was tricky in the case of Eugene Robinson, who wrote a few columns that stated the Democrats were erring in not attacking McCain. Who is getting the real criticism, here? In the case of Eugene, I made the call not to count the articles as negative coverage. Grey areas were no obstacle in the case of Bob Novak, who wrote a whopping 6 clearly negative pieces on Barack Obama. Same goes for Charles Krauthammer, who wrote 5 negative Obama screeds.

Overall, I recorded 17 negative Hillary Clinton pieces, 30 negative Barack Obama pieces, and 11 negative John McCain pieces. The last two weeks of February saw 7 negative pieces, easily her negative coverage peak in my sample. Over that same time period, Obama only recieved 2 such pieces, and McCain had 3. Obama got hit worst around the time of the Pennslyvannia primary (held April 22nd). From April 14 to April 25, Obama tallied 8 negative columns. Obama saw a second apogee in the return of Wright coverage (5 such columns from May 1-6). The second peak is very interesting because I found no sinking poll numbers that correlated with the negativity (Rasmussen has Obama gaining 6 points on Hillary during this time period, as does Gallup). With only 11 negative pieces, McCain has not really had “peaks,” but he did tally 3 attacks from 4/22 to 4/27. His poll numbers have been somewhat stagnant over the course of my research. Currently, Clinton is losing ground to him and Obama is gaining.

Mysterious Polls

From February 14 to May 6 (50 days), I read and wrote basic summaries of every presidential race related editorial in the Washington Post. One of my initial goals was to track opinion page themes, in hopes of finding a connection between WaPo tropes and actual public opinion. Specifically, I wanted to see a correlation between events and positive/negative coverage. After matching Op-Ed themes with head-to-head (McCain vs. Obama, Obama vs. Clinton, Clinton vs. McCain), Zogby, Gallup, AP and Rasmussen poll results, I found little correlation between public opinion results and Post coverage. What I did find was a heavy emphasis on “character” issues, and little emphasis on policy issues.

There were one major instance of poll activity correlating to opinion making. Obama’s numbers dipped in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright coverage, which hit the airwaves beginning on March 14. On March 17, Gallup tallied Clinton 47%, Obama 45%, and Obama 49%, McCain 47%. Two days later, after the story had gotten significant media attention, Gallup had Clinton 49%, Obama 42%, and McCain 47%, Obama 43%. Thus, began an onslaught of Wright questions in the Washington Post Op-Ed pages. From March 19 to the beginning of April, a whopping 10 out of the 21 presidential race focused editorials were devoted to the Reverend Wright issue.

A few factors may have fueled Wright pontificating in March. The new issue’s connection to race and boomer generation ‘culture wars’ was probably just plain interesting to many media members. Perhaps the negative poll bounce prompted some of the heavy Wright attention, and Obama may have attracted more coverage with his “A More Perfect Union” response speech.

The rationale for heavy early May “return of Wright coverage” makes little sense, though. The pastor made three few public appearances, and the Washington Post deemed it necessary to devote an astounding 8 out of 12 May 1- May 6 presidential editorials to this topic. This is odd because I found no evidence of a negative public reaction during or after the pastor’s April 26 PBS interview, or April 28 National Press Club speech. Obama still felt the need to “distance” himself from Wright, and did so in an April 29 speech. Obama’s poll numbers remained relatively stagnant immediately after the speech, and trended upwards in the following weeks.

As he came closer to mathematically eliminating Hillary Clinton, Obama’s poll prospects saw an uptick (The most recent polls show Obama beating Clinton by 7 points in the Gallup, 7 in the Rasmussen, and a whopping 16 in the Zogby). This is quite interesting for reasons I will get to in the second phase of my conclusions.

• 5/6 Richard Cohen

Obama’s refusal to wear the flag pin is indicative of a good thing: He is an independent thinker.

• 5/6 E.J. Dionne Jr.

The strange race has transformed who the candidates are. Clinton went from overconfident to the pugilistic comeback kid. Obama went from the transformative upstart to being the flawed frontrunner.

• 5/6 Wrap: I can’t believe Cohen said something substantive. Too bad it’s still personality-centric.