New Hampshire towers over the nation when a map of the United States is drawn in proportion to the share of news coverage in presidential nomination races.  Figure 2.1 shows a 1984 map of the states, based on ABC, CBS, NBC, and New York Times campaign stories from 1 January to 10 June.*  Rising like a mountain over the New England corner is an enormous New Hampshire. 

Everyone knows the importance of the New Hampshire primary is exaggerated.  That comes as no surprise.  But the magnitude of that exaggeration is startling. New Hampshire is not just mildly disproportionate; on the map, it dwarfs all other states.  Consider the following comparisons using the 1984 data:

• By itself, the New Hampshire primary received more attention than was given all the contests for delegates in the 17 southern and border states (including Texas and Florida) and the 7 Rocky Mountain states combined.
• New Hampshire's primary received 125 times as much coverage per Democratic primary voter as the large Ohio primary.
• The 8,403,000 Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, and California, combined, did not receive as much media attention as the 101,000 people who turned out for the Democratic primary in New Hampshire.

Figure 2.2, a map of the United States showing a shrunken New Hampshire and Iowa, presents the states in proportion to their electoral votes, which approximate their actual populations. This map dictates tactics and travel during the fall general election campaign. But geography for the nomination campaign in the previous winter and spring is vastly different. Figure 2.1 reflects those priorities. New Hampshire may have little weight when the general election comes around, but it is enormously powerful in the campaign for party nominations. 

As shown in Table 2.1 four states – New Hampshire, Iowa, New York and California – garnered half the media coverage during the 1984 nomination races.  Seven states together received nearly two-thirds of the coverage.  New Hampshire, with one-fifth of all coverage, is by far the least populated of the top seven states.

Is there any pattern in these priorities?  What factors arc likely to predict a state's volume of media coverage?  What can explain New Hampshire's remarkable role?  Likely explanations include primary date, delegation size, distance from media centers, drama involved, and displacement by other primaries

PRIMARY DATE

Americans treasure "firsts." Journalists put a premium on a "new" story any become bored with an old, somewhat repetitious story. Timing would seem to be a probable determinant of novelty, with the earliest states profiting most.  Nevertheless, the date of each state's contest (Iowa = Day 1; California = Day 100) shows only a minor correlation of –.21 with the relative amount of media attention allocated to each state. Not all early contests were highlighted, and not all later races were ignored.

DELEGATION SIZE

The size of a state's delegation to the party convention may also be a factor. Certainly at the level of pure logic a contest for several hundred delegates would seen more newsworthy than one for several dozen delegates. Yet delegation size had only a .38 correlation with a state's media share. (Only 14 percent of the variation in media visibility can be statistically explained by knowing the number of convention delegates at stake.)  While no one would expect a perfect journalistic equivalent of "one man, one vote," the discrepancy is substantial.

DISTANCE FROM MEDIA CENTERS

Proximity to media headquarters is often a major factor in international news priorities; and evidence shows that it is also a factor in domestic news. Proximity to New York City, headquarters for the major networks and leading print outlets, accounts for some variations in coverage. For example, New York state garnered 18 percent of all network news time, although it had only 9 percent of the population.²  And members of the 96th Congress representing districts in the New York area were significantly more likely to make an appearance or be cited on the nightly network news than were other membership.³  In the nomination campaign, however, distance from New York accounted for only a small portion of media priorities. The correlation coefficient was –.27; more miles from New York meant only a little less coverage.

ELEMENTS OF DRAMA

Primaries are easier to cover than complex caucuses. The results of primaries are usually known sooner, and primaries have more vox populi excitement.  One might hypothesize that caucuses and conventions would attract the least coverage, with nonbinding primaries ("beauty contests") getting more coverage and binding primaries receiving the most coverage.  Type of delegate selection had a –.28 correlation with coverage (scoring binding primaries as 3, nonbinding primaries as 2, and strictly caucus states as 1).  Primaries have a slight advantage, but several primaries were essentially ignored and the Iowa caucuses were spotlighted.

DISPLACEMENT BY OTHER PRIMARIES

Perhaps a state that selects its delegates on the same day as several other states receives proportionately less attention because it is somewhat "displaced" by the competition. A Super Tuesday may gain in overall hype, but any one state's treatment may be diluted. To have the entire day, or week, alone may be a bigger advantage. But the displacement factor did not make much difference in 1984. More contests on the same date only mildly depressed (–.18) a state's visibility.

If all five factors are examined simultaneously, how successfully do they predict coverage? In some instances, they appear to perform well. For example, South Dakota and New Mexico select delegates in June, at the end of the selection process; their primaries are on the same day as four other primaries (including California); they select only a few delegates; and the two states are remote from Manhattan or any other network bureau. For all practical purposes, they are invisible.

For all 50 states, the five factors do not predict as well. A multiple regression using the 1984 Democratic data produces a multiple R² of only .35. That is, barely more than one-third of the variation in coverage can be attributed to a state's having more delegates, deciding earlier in the season, having few or no other contests on the same day, and holding a primary rather than a caucus. ("Distance from media center" has almost no additional explanatory power once these other factors are held constant.)

As shown in table 2.2, a separate examination of the coverage of caucus states only and primary states only shows little improvement in the explanatory power of these variables. Overall, roughly two-thirds of the variation in coverage from state to state is left unexplained. 

Inspection of the residuals shows two states as extreme outliers with far" more coverage than predicted by the regression equation. The states are New Hampshire and Iowa. If these two cases are excluded, relationships change enormously. 

Table 2.3 shows the correlates of coverage of the 48 other states. Usually, news coverage is apportioned with considerable weight to the number of delegates at stake in each contest; the correlation is .82. Thus, excluding Iowa and New Hampshire, the purely objective element of delegation size can, by itself, statistically explain two-thirds of the variations in coverage (r² = .67). Moreover, once size is taken into account, the other factors offer little additional explanation.

Without the first two contests in the equation, several important findings emerge:

• When New Hampshire and Iowa are excluded from the prediction, nothing matters more than the number of delegates at stake. The apportionment of coverage has an imprecise but unexpectedly strong correlation with delegation size.
• Since most of the heavily populated states have primaries, primaries are covered more than caucuses. But the mode of selection contributes little (less than 2 percent in predicting coverage) after delegation size is accounted for.
• Minus New Hampshire and Iowa, even the date of the contest makes little difference. News coverage is fairly proportional considering what is at stake, and stays with the race on a surprisingly sustained basis.
• Contrasting figures 2.1 and 2.2 shows that the South has been somewhat neglected given its share of the U.S. population. Southerners intend to change that with a huge regional primary early in 1988.
• Overall (omitting New Hampshire and Iowa), the nomination campaign is reported in a way that keeps most contests in rough perspective.

This review has focused on coverage by ABC, CBS, NBC, and the New York Times.  The exact rankings of the states will vary somewhat from year to year and from outlet to outlet.  Most newspapers naturally emphasize campaign activities in their market area.  In a year when the nomination is wrapped up earlier than it was in 1984 (when Hart vigorously fought Mondale until the end), New Hampshire and Iowa would receive an even larger proportion of nomination campaign coverage.

The "secondary" primaries have varied over the years depending on the unique circumstances of each race.  In 1972, Florida ranked second in coverage.⁴  In 1976, Massachusetts came in second, and journalists discovered the early Iowa caucuses.  In 1980 and 1984, Iowa was firmly entrenched in second place.  Illinois and Pennsylvania were the runners-up in 1980 New York and California had that distinction in 11984.  Thus, the prominence of the states that follow New Hampshire has varied, but New Hampshire's extraordinary domination has not.
 

All of the New Hampshire media coverage has political clout not only because of its volume.  It is doubly powerful because of its content. Leading journalists use the New Hampshire results as the basis for restructuring their coverage of the candidates and issuing political obituaries for those who do poorly.  New Hampshire is not treated as simply an interesting preliminary contest.  It is made into a definitive test, which means disqualification for those candidates who do not pass with sufficiently high marks.  A review of the race for the 1984 Democratic nomination shows how this works.

As 1983 began, candidates who were high in the polls were those who had received the most prior media attention: Walter Mondale (a former vice-president), John Glenn (a former astronaut), and George McGovern (a former Democratic nominee). Most people had never heard of Alan Cranston, Gary Hart, Reubin Askew, or Ernest Hollings, and no more than 2 percent of the Democrats polled preferred any one of these candidates.

These early poll standings were an almost perfect barometer of candidate news attention throughout 1983.  As shown in table 2.4, rankings of the volume of coverage on the nightly network news and stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times closely duplicated early standings in the polls.  (The only candidate with any discrepancy between his poll ranking and news ranking was George McGovern, who did not announce his candidacy until late in the year.)

Allocations of 1983 coverage let the rich get richer. The only candidates to improve significantly in the polls during 1983 were those who had dominated print and broadcast journalism: Walter Mondale and John Glenn.  Conversely, those who were "poll poor" at the start stayed "media poor" during most of the year and went nowhere in the polls.  There were a few minor instances in 1983 when media did more than just reinforce the preexisting pecking order.⁵  But, by and large, journalists followed the lead of poll standings. 

This early nomination process, before the primaries, is circular:

Prior visibility produces high poll ratings, which ensures media coverage/legitimacy, which sustains poll standings, which ensure media coverage/legitimacy.  For those with a low standing initially, the situation is fairly static.  Low visibility. produces less than 5 percent in the polls, which means little media attention/ credibility, which ensures continued low standings in the polls.  This cycle depresses or stimulates the other key elements in campaign dynamics: money and volunteers.

The next stage, however, undergoes a radical transformation.  Starting with the first caucus, journalists change their entire perspective on the nomination race. They abandon reliance on national polls to rank the candidates. They reorder candidate status by the nomination results in Iowa and New Hampshire. Though they are small and unrepresentative, the first caucus (Iowa) and the first primary (New Hampshire) are used to winnow out candidates who fail to do well in those two states and boost candidates who do well.

In 1984, during the week before the Iowa caucuses, airtime allocations⁶ still mirrored national polls, with Mondale way out front, and Glenn and Jackson coming in second and third.  Most of the rest of the pack were essentially ignored. Hart received 4 percent of the candidate coverage that week, as did McGovern.  Hollings and Askew each received less than 2 percent.

On 20 February, the Iowa caucuses changed all that.  The Democratic caucuses were attended by about 85,000 people, less than one-sixth of the number who regularly vote Democratic in presidential elections in Iowa.  Total caucus turnout constituted only 17 percent of the half-million Iowa Democratic votes cast, for example, in 1972 for McGovern.

This one-sixth segment of the party resides in a state that has gone Democratic only one since siding with neighbor Harry Truman in 1948.  But no matter how inconsequential Iowa Democrats are in November, thanks to the news, they are powerful in February.  As shown earlier, enormous attention is given to the Iowa caucuses – the networks often devote over one-third of their entire newscast to Iowa.

Although no candidate came close to Mondale's 45 percent of the vote, measured against expectations, two outcomes attracted the most interest:

1. Glenn did poorly, winning only 5 percent; and
2. Hart unexpectedly placed second to Mondale, though he had only 15 percent (12,600 votes), less than 2,000 votes ahead of McGovern.

"Senators Hart and Glenn traded places in Iowa. Hart moved up to number two. Glenn became an also-ran. The effect of this surprising reversal already is being felt in their campaigns."

Walter Cronkite had said in 1980:

"Iowa has replaced New Hampshire as the place we start the elimination process." 

Taken together, the Iowa "surprises" raise another issue. Some might argue that the Iowa outcome refutes the entire theory that the media confer status; after all, Glenn did much worse, while Hart and McGovern did better, than national media coverage would have predicted. Actually, Iowa only proved (via John Glenn) that prior media attention does not guarantee a constituency but only offers an opportunity to assemble one; it does not indefinitely compensate for weak speeches and poor organization.

Iowa also demonstrated that it is possible for a candidate (Gary Hart) portrayed as a dark horse to mobilize 3 percent (12,600) of the Iowans who regularly vote Democratic in presidential elections (500,000) to attend caucuses one evening in February.  That little feat does not demolish but only qualifies the role of media status conferral when it comes to small subsets of activists early in a presidential campaign.

After Iowa, Hart was depicted as the leading alternative to Walter Mondale, and Hart's coverage was nearly free of harsh criticism, unflattering issues, or cynical commentary.  In contrast, John Glenn was "trying desperately to recharge his batteries" (Brokaw), and Jesse Jackson was "spending a lot of time . . . defensively fielding questions about . . . alleged remarks about Jews" (Rather).  McGovern continued to be dismissed, and the rest hardly existed in the world of the networks. This left Gary Hart enjoying his Iowa windfall of coverage and not yet ripe for network scrutiny of his name change, age, and "new ideas."

Next came the New Hampshire primary on 28 February.⁷  Hart beat Mondale by a margin of 37,702 to 28,173 out of 3101,131 votes cast. Glenn received 12,088 votes, and the remaining 23,168 were divided among six other candidates.

David Broder has commented:

"The safest bet you can make, in advance of any presidential year, is that the winner of the out-party's New Hampshire primary will be on all three networks' early morning and evening news shows the next day, that he will be featured in long profiles in the next Sunday's newspapers, and that he will be on the covers of the three news magazines the following week."⁸

As ABC's Harry Reasoner said, years earlier: "For some, New Hampshire will be fatal to their ambitions." And in the two weeks after New Hampshire, Glenn, with 4 percent of the candidate airtime on CBS and 7 percent on NBC, joined McGovern (5 percent on CBS and 1 percent on NBC) in relative obscurity. Askew, Cranston, and Hollings finally got some coverage when they dropped out of the race. 

Coverage in the wake of New Hampshire is extremely potent because it hits many voters who are just "tuning in" to the campaign. The peak for following the 1984 nomination campaign on television and in the newspapers came in the days and weeks just after the New Hampshire primary.⁹  At that time, nearly half said they were regularly following the campaign on television, and nearly one-third were doing so in newspapers (see table 2.5).

The number of people who had a favorite candidate whom they recommended to others also increased in March and stayed fairly steady at around 25 to 28 percent. The segment expressing an interest in the campaign was stable in the 44 to 48 percent range throughout the season. Yet active monitoring of the campaign clearly peaked during the post-New Hampshire through the post-Super Tuesday period.

Thanks to 2000 Iowa and 9500 New Hampshire voters (Hart's margins), and the way in which these votes were amplified by the media at a time when the audience was especially primed and ready, the new question was, "Can Hart be stopped?"  In a replay of Jimmy Carter's 1976 media momentum, Hart was suddenly a contender or even a favorite in states where he had not had any organization and virtually no support just two weeks earlier.  The big difference between Carter in 1976 and Hart in 1984 was that the media's honeymoon with Hart ended before he had a chance to lock up the nomination.

Starting on 8 March, barely one week after the New Hampshire primary victory, and running for two crucial weeks until Mondale's victory in Illinois on 20 March, Hart was subjected to an extraordinary barrage of criticism.¹⁰  When Ed Fouhy, then a producer at ABC news, was asked about this rush to critique Hart, he said, "We try and learn from past mistakes, so we made a real effort to dig as deep as we could as quickly as we could."

After laboring under the accusation of having propelled unscrutinized "unknowns" (McGovern in 1972 and Carter in 1976) with dubious talents into positions of power, journalists had the instinctive reaction not to let it happen again.  They would not sell the Republic another untested hinterland visionary.  This time there would be no sustained excitement over a conquering dark horse, no gullible faith in the promise of "new ideas," no long ride on New Hampshire's momentum.

While the post-New Hampshire honeymoon was in its full glory, Hart was catapulted from being the choice of 7 percent to the choice of 38 percent of the nation's Democrats. Meanwhile, Mondale plummeted from 57 to 31 percent.¹¹  That 31 percent jump for the winner and 26 percent fall for the loser was the largest national opinion shift on record after a New Hampshire primary. The average surge for nonincumbent victors is 14 percent, while the average decline for their major opponent is 11 percent.

Table 2.6 is a compilation of national poll standings before and after contested New Hampshire primaries since 1964. During these six presidential election years, there have been nine contested primaries.

In two instances, incumbent Presidents won over their challengers. But neither of these New Hampshire victories improved their popularity ratings.  Neither President Ford in 1976 (against Ronald Reagan) nor President Carter in 1980 (against Ted Kennedy) enjoyed a post-N.H. boomlet.  An incumbent President who is so weak as to prompt a within-party challenge benefits little from holding off the challenger.  Incumbent Presidents already have a well established –  perhaps too well-established – image and scarcely need extra publicity. A defeat or a perceived defeat may hurt (as it hurt Lyndon Johnson in 1968), but a victory does not seem to help.

In contrast, all nonincumbent winners have found their relative standing improved by the New Hampshire results. In every instance, their major opponents suffered, although none more than Mondale's 26-percentage-point slide.  And, in all cases but one, the winner's poll rating shot upward. Henry Cabot Lodge, who was not even in the country at the time, raced ahead 30 points.  Gary Hart holds the record with his 31-point gain.

Two of those classified here as "winners" actually lost the primary.  Yet, because they did unexpectedly well against the front-runners, journalists granted them "moral victories."  In 1968, Eugene McCarthy was proclaimed the "winner" when he surpassed expectations and lost to the front-runner (President Lyndon Johnson) by 8 percent.  In 1972, George McGovern was declared the "winner" when he beat expectations and lost to the front-runner (Edmund Muskie) by 9 percent.¹²

McGovern was the only winner (or pseudo winner) who failed to translate a positive media verdict out of New Hampshire into an immediate popularity gain.  Nevertheless, his chief opponent was damaged. Edmund Muskie, previously considered the likely nominee, was hurt by the interpretation of his winning margin as a disappointment.  Twelve percent of his Democratic fans departed soon after New Hampshire, and his downward slide began.

Some analysts have speculated that Democrats are more vulnerable to these vicissitudes than Republicans are.  While it is true that the most recent and most dramatic case (Hart-Mondale) did occur among Democrats, there are no examples of Republican (nonincumbent) winners who failed to chalk up a post-New Hampshire improvement as well.

Most people vote for the candidate they like the best (or dislike the least) among those who appear to be viable.  Henry Brady's analysis of weekly surveys conducted throughout the 1984 campaign confirms the heavy degree to which voters' choices are not only a function of candidate policy positions and traits but of perceived candidate viability and electability as well.¹³  Tom Patterson for 1976 and Tom Marshall for 1980 have shown how, for those nomination campaigns, coverage was keyed to candidates' early performances¹⁴; again, positive media verdicts produced public opinion payoffs. Protest votes and other special cases excepted, most people do not want to waste their votes on a lost cause. Preferences swing toward the most tolerable candidate who has a chance – hence, the devastating impact of being branded "hopeless" in the aftermath of New Hampshire.

Before an election, candidates dare not acknowledge the oddities of the system.  They cannot afford to alienate voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, on whom so much depends.  They cannot solicit votes while publicly admitting the absurdity of those same voters having de facto veto power over the nomination.

After an election, candidate complaints are dismissed as "sour grapes."  After Iowa, John Glenn tried to point out how unrepresentative its caucuses were.  He was right, but who listens to a "sore loser?"

To skip Iowa or New Hampshire implies weakness.  That option is too dangerous for most candidates to attempt.  Morris Udall had intended to skip Iowa in 1976, until he discovered how heavily the media planned to cover Iowa.¹⁵  Then, like almost every candidate since, he felt compelled to make Iowa a high priority.

If candidates have no standing, critiques of the system revert to party leaders and party committees.  Iowa and New Hampshire are such historically Republican states that one would think the process would be of special concern to the Democratic leadership.  Considering the persistently dismal performance of Democratic presidential nominees, there seems to be some basic flaw in a nominating system that regularly produces tickets that produce landslide rejections.  In four of the past five presidential elections, the Democrats have not exceeded 43 percent of the popular vote.  At least for the Democrats, more meditation over Nelson Polsby's Consequences of Party Reform¹⁶ is in order.

So much for politicians and parties; what about the press? The apportionment of campaign coverage is not easy or obvious. That journalists must make such decisions is unavoidable, but that fact does not make their decisions any less powerful or any less influential.

Some writers have argued that the obsession with Iowa and New Hampshire is unavoidable, their gravitational pull is too strong to resist.  That "the press and television would give exaggerated importance to those early contests" was "inevitable," wrote David Broder.¹⁷  But is the exaggeration of the New Hampshire and Iowa results inevitable?  It is not fair to journalists to say they will not or cannot put the early contests into a more restrained perspective.

Both broadcast and print journalism has grown steadily more sophisticated in the coverage of campaigns.  Extensive surveys are conducted to help interpret voting results more insightfully rather than rely on guesswork.  Increasingly, efforts are made to provide the public with reviews of where candidates stand on the issues – often despite the efforts of candidates to remain artfully vague.  There is every indication that journalists' sensitivity to the unfairness of calling primary winners "losers" has been responsible for the decline of this practice in recent years.¹⁸  The unfortunate experiment with a viewer call-in ersatz poll to declare who won the presidential debates was never repeated. There is nothing inescapable or irreversible about the rush to anoint two semifinalists based on the first tentative tests.

What, then, is the wisest way to winnow candidates based on New Hampshire and Iowa?  That may be the wrong question.  Why should the nomination race be reordered at all, based on such laughably minuscule electorates?

Notes

* The content data from 1 January through 10 June 1984 are calculated from all early-evening network newscasts summarized in Vanderbilt's TV News Index and Abstracts (using seconds of air time per state and proportionately allocating multiple-state stories) and from the New York Times using column inches per state.

1. William C. Adams, "Whose Lives Count?: Television Coverage of Natural Disasters," Journal of Communication, Summer 1986.

2. Joseph R. Dominick, "Geographical Bias in National TV News," Journal of Communication (Autumn 1977): 94-99

3. Timothy E. Cook, "House Members as Newsmakers," Legislative Studies Quarterly 11 (May 1986): 203-26.

4. For a review of early 1972 and 1976 coverage, see Michael J. Robinson and Karen McPherson, "Television News Coverage Before the 1976 New Hampshire Primary: The Focus of Network Journalism," Journal of Broadcasting 21 (Spring 1977): 177-86. For 1980 CBS and UPI coverage, see Michael J. Robinson and Margaret Sheehan, Over the Wire and on TV (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1983).

5. William C. Adams, "Media Coverage of Campaign ‘84," Public Opinion, April/ May 1984, 9-13; "The Power of 'The Right Stuff'" Public Opinion Quarterly 49 (Autumn 11985): 330-39.

6. Starting one week before the Iowa caucuses, early weeknight CBS and NBC newscasts were coded for the amounts of airtime devoted to each Democratic candidate. Calculated as a percentage of the total time given to all Democratic candidates, this measure shows the relative share of attention assigned each candidate.

7. Unlike the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire's primary draws as many as four-fifths of the people who vote Democratic in November. Their numbers are still small, however; New Hampshire has gone Democratic only once since the presidential election of 1944.

8. "Braking the Bandwagon," Washington Post, 11 March 1984.

9. These findings are calculated from data presented by Henry Brady and Richard Johnston, "What's the Primary Message: Horse Race or Issue Journalism?" in this volume. Since single-week samples were relatively small (only about 75 usable interviews per week), to reduce sampling error, weeks were combined to create sample sizes of at least 300 total.

10. Adams, "Media Coverage of Campaign '84."

11. Based on national CBS/New York Times polls, 21-25 February and 5-8 March.

12. In 1976, however, Ronald Reagan was said to have lost when he came within 2 percent of the front-runner (President Gerald Ford).

13. See Brady and Johnston, "What's the Primary Message?"

14. Thomas E. Patterson, The Mass Media Election (New York: Praeger, 1980); Thomas R. Marshall, "The News Verdict and Public Opinion during the Primaries;" in Television Coverage of the 1980 Presidential Campaign, ed. William C. Adams (Norwood, NJ.: Ablex, 1983), 49-67.

15. F Christopher Arterton, "Campaign Organizations Confront the Media-Political Environment;" Race for the Presidency, ed. James David Barber (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), 117.

16. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

17. David S. Broder, "Braking the Bandwagon."

18. See Michael J. Robinson, "TV's Newest Program: The Presidential Nominating Game," Public Opinion 1 (May/June 1978): 411-46.

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