Chapter 10 The Media in Elections I
and choose a nominee; rather, the great majority of the delegates are already committed to a candidate and the winner is usually clear beforehand.
The presidential nomination process is then, a long, drawn-out process.12 The Democrats, since 1980, have sought to shorten the process, recognizing the complaints from many people of the absurdity of such a long, expensive, wear¬ing process, and one in which some delegates are selected five or six months before the convention, during which time much can change. But the stakes in the existing order are high for some states. This is because of the pattern of media attention to the early primaries and caucuses, which is detailed in the next chapter. The extreme amount of media attention given the earliest delegate selection events, along with the good chance the contest for the nomination will be effectively decided in the first half of that long succession of events, has led to many efforts by states to move up their primary or caucus to an early position, tor 1996, even more states have moved up their primaries to capture additional media and candidate attention, making the process even more "front-loaded" than in 1992. Richard Rubin has interestingly pointed out that from 1968 through 1976 television news played a prime role in "legitimating the primary process as the genuinely democratic way to choose convention delegates."1-' Whether all this is a sensible way to choose a presidential nominee is another story.
THE MEDIA IN ELECTIONS: METHODS OF STUDY
Elections have been the most studied facet of the political system. As we noted earlier, elections and the media's role in them are also matters about which most people have rough impressions and opinions, garnered haphazardly, as a rule. The rest of this chapter, however, discusses some of the more prominent sys¬tematic efforts to study the nature of the media's role in and impact on elections. Since the research on this subject has greatly increased and produced a multi¬tude of books, journal articles, and professional papers in recent years, we can only provide a sampling of the main methods. Further, of those significant stud¬ies we will look at, most involve many and complex considerations; we cannot review all the particulars. The following discussion of the main elements, with some questions raised about limits or weaknesses in the methods used, will hopefully provide a good introduction to the principles of systematic analysis of the media's role in elections.
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