Dirk Smillie
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 In an age of Internet "click-in" surveys and overnight tracking polls,
horserace coverage of this year's Presidential race is once again
undermining the very campaign it chronicles.
Much of what drives horserace coverage is the media's own passion for
polling. Originally an attempt by news organizations to bypass the
spin candidates put on their own polls, modern media polling is fueled more
by the desire to create news "exclusives."
Most media polls are seeded with questions designed less to understand
the nuances of public views than to produce newsworthy findings upon
which reporters can hang a story.
In the 1996 Presidential contest, for example, story after story cast
Clinton's standing in the polls as an invincible lead over Bob Dole.
Not surprisingly, this drumbeat of the inevitable contributed to a 49
percent voter turnout -- the lowest in a Presidential election since
1924.
A similar rash of surveys broke out during the primaries in January and
February of this year, when no less than five separate tracking polls
in New Hampshire covered the Republican primary like the Kentucky Derby.
In Europe, horserace coverage of political races amounts to a small
fraction of the overall headlines and soundbites. Polls play a far
smaller role in campaigns in nations like Austria, Belgium and Italy,
which consistently draw 85-90 percent voter turnout.
Of course, many factors affect whether people show up at the voting
booth. But cutting back on horserace polls and the coverage they
create could be a key first step in stopping America's voter turnout from
sinking any further.
Dirk Smillie is director of the News Research Group, an independent,
nonpartisan media research organization in New York City. Smillie is
also editor of "Presswatch", a series of monthly reports on press coverage of
this year's US Senate race in New York State. Smillie has been a
contributor to the "Christian Science Monitor", "George", "The Nation", "Crain's New York
Business" and other publications.
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