International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Horse race journalism is a controversial form of political coverage. It means reporting on politics with the help of sports metaphors. Horse race journalism is particularly prevalent in election campaign coverage, mainly in the context of opinion polls (→  Election Campaign Communication ; Political Communication ). Horse race coverage looks approximately like this: at the beginning of the campaign, a candidate goes into the race with a head start, soon gets tired, regains strength only after a quarter of the race, loses speed again and falls back at the back straight, only to make the home stretch by a short head and win the race in the end. The race is exciting from the beginning to the end ( Broh 1980 ). Election polls are useful to journalists drawing on this metaphor, since they can tell the “spectator” who is ahead in the race and whether a candidate's position is improving or deteriorating throughout the race. With the increasing diffusion of →  election polls and forecasts since the 1940s, horse race journalism has been on the upswing (→  Public Opinion Polling ). However, it has been around much longer than modern opinion polling. As early as 1888, the Boston Journal used the horse race image in its election coverage ( Littlewood 1999 ). It has been criticized ever since, and with the emergence of modern polling techniques, the criticism has also been directed against ... log in or subscribe to read full text