Off to the Horse Races

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There has been some discussion of “horse race” coverage of politics recently, around the Internets. The best explanation I’ve seen for why the press tends to cover the horse-race, who’s-going-to-win aspect more than policy comes from Andrew Gelman, over at the blog whose name is so nerdy I’ll just leave it out here (though it’s fabulous and you should read it — if you like nerdy):

My theory, at least for the general election, is that most of the voters have already decided who they’re going to vote for–and even the ones who haven’t decided are often more predictable than they realize. Suppose, for example, that 40% have pretty much already decided they’ll vote for the Democrat, 40% will vote for the Republican, and the fight is over the remaining 20%–most of whom do not follow politics closely in any case. Now think of the audience for political news. 80% of the people don’t need to know the candidates’ positions–they’ve already decided their votes–but they’re intensely interested in the horse race: are “we” going to win or lose? The substantive coverage that Krugman and I might want is really just for 20% of the audience. So, from that perspective, it makes sense for the media to give people the horse race. (Yes, survey respondents say they want more of candidates position issues and less on which candidate is leading in the polls–but I don’t know that I believe people when they say this.)

This is certainly just one component along with the others I’ve seen mentioned (policy is hard, horse-race is easy; journalists don’t want to “take a position”; etc.). But it’s an important one. There’s simply not much audience for really in-depth policy analysis. And those people can read blogs or policy magazines. TV and newspapers are not likely to devote significantly more time and energy to this than they already do — no matter how much the wonks complain.