Thursday, October 23, 2008

Does the media influence elections more than the issues do?

 Case in point, Sarah Palin on SNL, will this be a boost to her campaign, or will it actually make her look uninteresting in comparison to Tina Fey's undoubtebly perfect impression of her? Could this actually affect how people will see the governor, and could it affect how they vote?

 The reason I say this is because Sarah Palin's popularity is nearly the same as Barack Obamas, and it's easy to forget senator John McCain is the one who's running the presidential race and not her. Her popularity is massive, Newsweek, The Times, Maclean's (a Canadian current affairs magazine), NewStatesman and several other publications have had nearly as many articles about Sarah palin as about Barack Obama, and few about senator McCain, and good luck finding one on Joe Biden, though his lack of gaffes lately means he's probably not going to be noticed much, but that's just fine.

 Or is it just the opposite? could it be that media coverage simply reflects which way the public will vote? for instance, in the Canadian elections the conservative party, the Liberals and the NDP all shared a fair bit of nedia coverage, but it was undoubtebly in that order you saw articles about them, and the elected parliament, in descending order, goes Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, Bloq, and two independents. On the other end of the spectrum, the party that recieved the least amount of media coverage was the Greens, and they didn't end up with a single seat minus the fact there leader Elizabeth May was allowed in the televised debate.

 What do you think?

5 comments:

FBOMB said...

who is barack obama? was he a canadian candidate?

Scott Drouin said...

I'll assume that's a joke, but even so, he's the Democratic Presidential candidate in the United States, and is currently leading in the pre-election polls.

FBOMB said...

sorry im out of the loop. didnt even know they were holding an election. does bush have a minority government? i dont think he is going to win against anyone even this obama charachter

Scott Drouin said...

the presidency is not based on Minorities or majorities, it's a general election, and Bush is out of office this november, eight years is the maximum length of time you can hold office.

Randy Drouin said...

fbomb, that is some grade-A trolling. Nicely done, nicely done.