Do You Have Election Fatigue?
What is Election Fatigue? Do you have it? Are voters hearing too much about Obama? Not enough about McCain? Let me know what you think in comments.
The Pew Research Center is reporting that 48% polled, are hearing too much about Obama.
As he has since January, this week, Barack Obama enjoyed much more visibility as far as the public was concerned than did John McCain. By a margin of 76% to 11% respondents in Pew’s weekly News Interest Index survey named Obama over McCain as the candidate they have heard the most about in recent days. But the same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate’s media dominance may not be working in his favor. Close to half (48%) of Pew’s interviewees went on to say that they have been hearing too much about Obama lately. And by a slight, but statistically significant margin - 22% to 16% - people say that recently they have a less rather than more favorable view of the putative Democratic nominee.
From Outside The Beltway…
What’s truly remarkable, though, is the juxtaposition of the above finding with the other aspect of the poll Pew is highlighting: Awareness and perception of the candidates’ ad spots.
Roughly the same number of people have seen both candidates’ ads. By nearly a 3-to-1 margin, people think McCain’s ads are more negative and by more than a 2-to-1 margin, people think Obama’s ads are more positive.
So, does this mean people like negative ads?
Or do people think Obama is getting more than his fair share of mainstream media coverage? Was the overseas trips with the cheering throngs of Germans too much for people?
From Backporch Politics…
This is what happens when sycophantic news organizations devote themselves wholeheartedly to promoting a political candidate, people get tired of hearing it. With just three weeks until the Democratic National Convention, which will receive non-stop coverage on all the networks, you can expect this dissatisfaction to grow. We’re three months from the elections, and the media is only going to devote more time to coverage of the campaigns, so there’s no room for reversal.
From Hullabaloo…
The Obama campaign has obviously felt it was necessary to reintroduce the candidate to the public for the last month or so and reassure them that he isn’t a scary, young radical, while McCain has used the same political window to slam him as a lightweight egomaniacal “star.” So it’s been all Obama all the time. And now half the people say they are sick of hearing about him.
From NPR…
But McCain may still have a chance to wear out his welcome. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, last week (July 28 - August 3) was the first week this year in which McCain garnered as much press coverage as Obama.
Also See:
So…Do you have election fatigue? Is Obama getting too much media coverage for his own good? Could election fatigue hurt the Obama campaign? Let me know what you think in comments.
