Did the Media Go Far Enough in Mapping Super Tuesday?
I loved table-sized monitor where TV news anchors pointed and illustrated location-based phenomenon during Tuesday night’s "Super Tuesday" primary election coverage. But for my taste they didn’t go far enough. They certainly drilled down to the county level to show polling results but never explained why, other than to say that one candidate did better in the urban areas of big cities, etc. Good reporting but not enough.
For example, while Mike Huckabee was winning southern states, the reason was ostensibly that he carried the evangelical vote. But you can’t just explain it away with a wave of the arms. Show me that the majority of polling places were held at Baptist Churches, if that was the case or that the demographic composition of the populace was of a certain religious denomination. I want detail; I want facts. And that information is available. I expect this level of coverage will come eventually. For the average viewer some might think that too much information. However, I’d like to see the media apply psychographics to their analysis as well. I want to see if the "American Diversity" demographic went for McCain and the "Affluent Suburbia" went for Romney; did "Struggling Societies" go for Clinton, and "Urban Essence" go for Obama? (See the Mosaic psychographic profiles for explanation of these classifications) I haven’t seen it yet, but it will come.
