Image courtesy of Mike Van Schoonderwalt on Pexels.

At any moment in the U.S., thousands of leadership searches are under way—for presidents of universities, athletic directors, newsroom editors-in-chief, and many other key roles. The 2024 presidential primaries are a phase of America’s leadership search, building up to final candidates’ speeches during the major conventions in July and August. The ideal outputs of these conventions will be two presidential nominees and running mates who are qualified, both constitutionally and ethically, for the positions.

How is this search process going? Are “we the people” receiving relevant information about each candidate? Are the candidates given equitable amounts of attention?

Since daily news has a major role in informed and fair elections, CivicStory wanted to know if primary candidate coverage was reasonably fair. We believed that simple ‘name mentions’ might be an objective and interesting measurement, especially in the key weeks before the Iowa Caucuses. So we compared the basic number of mentions of Republican primary candidates’ last names—Christie, DeSantis, Haley, Hutchinson, Ramaswamy, and Trump—in a representative sample of news stories. (We did not track Democratic primary candidates’ names, as the current president’s incumbent status would yield less meaningful data.)

Specifically, we tracked name mentions of primary candidates from January 2–13 in news stories about the 2024 elections. We did not include news stories about candidates’ legal proceedings, unless the 2024 elections were directly referenced. We also did not count opinion pieces, except for one piece by an editorial board focused on the 2024 elections. Though we analyzed both print and broadcast news, we eventually focused on 24 stories from one outlet in order to analyze a consistent, focused data set.

The four graphs below indicate:

1a) total name mentions of six candidates in 24 news stories from Jan. 2–13 (bar graph)
1b) percentages of name mentions of six candidates in 24 news stories (pie chart)

2a) total name mentions of six candidates in headlines of 24 news stories (bar graph)
2b) percentages of name mentions of six candidates in headlines of 24 news stories (pie chart)

The graphs include the initials of the six candidates who were still campaigning as of January 2, 2024, in alphabetical order by their last names.

Ex. 1. Graphs 1a and 1b:

Ex. 2. Graphs 2a and 2b

Between the Iowa Caucus (Jan. 15) and the New Hampshire primary (Jan. 23), the number of Republican primary candidates declined dramatically from six to two. CivicStory tracked name mentions of two remaining candidates through the week, from the day before the New Hampshire primary to five days after the primary. The next four graphs indicate name mentions of the two “finalists” in 26 news stories and headlines, following the methodology described above.

Ex. 3. Graphs 3a and 3b

Ex. 4. Graphs 4a and 4b

Methodology

What we counted:

basic name mentions in the story
name mentions via contrived words or phrases such as “Trump-backed”

What we did not count:

name mentions in photo captions or in editorial subheadings
pronouns referring to candidates
descriptive identifiers such as “former UN Ambassador” or “former Arkansas governor”
name mentions of family members

Although we observed similar trends across many newsrooms, we analyzed data from a single source with an extensive newsroom that does not publish content from other newsrooms (The New York Times) in order to isolate a more meaningful data set. This link will take readers to a complete list of tracking data and list of news stories used in this analysis. The list refers to candidates by the initial of their last names in order to remain neutral, objective, and consistent in its data set.

Summary

All eight graphs show notable disparities in the number of name mentions, both in news stories and in headlines. (A comparison of the news story and headline graphs shows basic proportionality.)

Given the societal need for fair and successful primary elections and nomination processes, the disparities raise questions of public information and awareness, as well as broader issues about the role of news in a healthy democracy. We hope these graphs spark constructive discussion of both.

Primary Campaign Reporting: One Measure of News Editors’ Choices