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Timothy Chmielewski
5 December 2013
Pol 101
Horse Races: A Campaign of Media and Stigmas
Stigma. As defined by the Miriam-Webster dictionary a stigma is a set of
negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have about something.
In our world today we often have various stigmas for things such as race, religion, sexual
orientation and other things of that nature. These beliefs can carry over and effect other
peoples lives especially when shared on a widespread platform such as the media. In the
news we hear about many things and when it involves people usually something such as
their race is included and from that we are able to make a heuristic judgment about the
situation and person. This can often come to an unfair conclusion of the individual due to
clouded judgment and external factors that should not even be considered. Because of
recent milestones, as some may consider, in changes of our executive branch in our
government a lot of these stigmas have come to surface.
The 2008 election was known as the election that brought forth the First Black
President Barack Obama, as he won the election against Republican candidate John
McCain. A lot of the focus was around the fact that Obama was not of full Caucasian
decent or appearance. Many people were either all for having an African American
president or completely against it. You would hear various things such as that he wasnt
born in the United States, had a fake birth certificate and even things as ridiculous as
saying he is the Anti-Christ. Then four years later Obama ran again for president
against the Republican Candidate, Mitt Romney. Now, in this election Obamas ethnicity
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was not the only thing of concern to the American public, but Romneys religious
background, Mormonism.
Barack Hussien Obama was born in Honnululu, Hawaii to a Caucasian mother
and African-American father. When he was in his youth he lived in Indonesia for two
years and moved back to the United States to attend school. His education consisted of
two years at Occidental College, two years at Columbia University then Harvard Law
School. He worked as a civil rights lawyer then decided to go into politics. In 2000 he ran
for a seat in the House of Representatives and lost, but in 2004 won a seat in the Senate.
After that he ran against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary for the 2008
Presidential election, which he won. He is a person that emphasizes a lot on civil rights
and equality and has been apart of various big steps forward in them. (Bio.com)
Mitt Romney, a Michigan native, was born in Detroit and son of a former
Michigan governor George Romney. Mitt attended Cranbrook, a private school in the
Detroit area, then for college he went to Brigham Young University and then went on to
get a law and business degree from Harvard. Romney also lived in France for two years
as a Mormon missionary. In 1994 he ran for Senate then lost in Massachusetts, but then
became governor in 2003 after he was successful in leading the organization of the
Olympic Games of 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Romney was well known for founding
the investment firm Bain Capital and went onto win the Republican primary for the spot
of Republican candidates in the 2012 presidential election. Romney is an advocate for
businesses and created jobs for America and even helped Massachusetts out with their
large deficit during his time as governor. (Bio.com)
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As you see both of these candidates had very favorable traits and that enough is
something should consider when choosing the president. Just ask yourself this question,
what would I want in a president? Did you think of things like well educated, considerate,
able to get us out of debt? Most of us would generally think of characteristics like such
but when it comes to the actual election we tend to focus less on those things and more on
things that really dont have much to do with the job of being President of the United
States. Sure, we do put some aspects of past achievements of the individuals into
consideration but what, amongst most people, do you recall where big issues with each
candidate? To be completely honest I remember a lot of people criticizing Obamas
ethnicity and when asked, nobody really knew what he stood for or what he has
accomplished besides what they say in extremist social network postings. When it came
to Romney people would tend to criticize his Mormon background and depict him to be
some sort of a dictator as a president because of his conservative beliefs. Other times all
people really care about are who is ahead in polls or who is most favorable in popular
opinion. All of this is heavily attributed to the actions of mainstream media. Even if they
are not supporting the stigmas presented about certain aspects of the candidates they are
fueling it due to constant discussion about it.
Negative advertising was first used in 1988 by George Bush against Michael
Dukakis. This is what we normally see on TV, when some negative action by the
opposite candidate is stated and then at the end you see a person saying their name and
they approve the message. This is where a lot of the unnecessary, unrelated comment
begins. As this escalades it has a heavy effect on who is at a certain ranking in the polls
which ends up having a huge impact on who someone may vote for in some cases. This
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all comes down to certain term used politics that describes whens this happens. Horse
race. (Cliffnotes.com)
If you were at a horse race you would probably notices people are cheering for a
certain horse to get ahead if they bet on it or they will just keep cheering on the horse that
is in the lead. In politics the very same thing happens, especially in presidential elections
and the mass medias role in it is known as horse race journalism. Certain good aspects of
a candidate can be brought forth by the media to affect them positively or the opposite
can happen where the stigmas are magnified and it can harm the popular opinion of a
candidate. To see the effect that the media has on popular opinion in relation to horse
race journalism a study was done in Netherlands. The Netherlands was chosen because of
its loose association with American politics so it was almost like having a blank slate to
work with. 200,000 Dutch people were randomly chosen to partake in the study and their
opinions on candidates in the 2008 election, which included Obama, over time before the
election took place. They were measured in comparison to various international news
sources as well as national news. The effects showed some interesting results. As
apparent support increased for a particular candidate the public opinion by the people in
the Netherlands went up, but interestingly enough since Obama is a minority this affected
the view of him positively because in Europe minority breakthroughs are appreciated.
The study concluded by showing that media does have a huge effect on the presidential
elections. (The Mass Media and Political Coverage)
There was another study done on the negative advertisements and opinions of
candidates by collecting data from several elections. The data showed that negative
media harmed the poll results and by doing so harmed the persons chances of winning
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the presidency. It even showed the effect of the horse race phenomenon fueled itself,
because as somebody began to get in the lead people tend to side with that person more
because the public is more likely to side with what they view as a winner. (Mutz)
All of this shows that what the media portrays has input on peoples views of the
presidential candidates. So what this comes to is that when the news spends so much time
discussing a candidates race or religion it can cause certain views to form which can be
something that makes a person to vote for one candidate over the other. Sadly this is
something does occur in our world today. There are people that would go as far as saying
that the reason they did not for Obama is because of his ethnicity or they did not vote for
Romney because he is a Mormon. The medias constant discussion of things like race
was well apparent in the recent case that was made popular because this constant
discussion, the case involving the murder of Trayvon Martin. In the case people
constantly talked about the topic that it was racial labeling that lead to the murder. The
medias job is to bring us the news at the proper angle, and how we are going about
showing the news today almost makes it an inaccurate portrayal. Just like the murder
case, the presidential election is not about someones race or religion but rather it is about
what the actual actions themselves of the people involved. In conclusion, horse race
journalism leads to people to believing things to the popular opinion being manipulated
and polarized to how certain mainstream medias may seem fit and leads us into group
thinking a certain way. We are not making decisions for ourselves but rather the media
providers we choose to blindly follow are making the decisions. (Maynard)


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Works Cited
"Barack Obama Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 05 Dec.
2013.
"Int. Journal of Public Opinion Research." A Worldwide Presidential Election: The
Impact of the Media on Candidate and Campaign Evaluations. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec.
2013.
"The Mass Media and Political Coverage." The Mass Media and Political Coverage.
N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
Maynard, Dori J. "Media Need Not Look Far to Explain Reasons for Racial Angst." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 06 Aug. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
"Mitt Romney Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
Mutz, Diana C. "Effects of Horse-Race Coverage on Campaign Coffers: Strategic
Contributing in Presidential Primaries." The Journal of Politics 57.4 (1995): 1015. Print.