Endspurt. Mediales Horse-Racing im Wahlkampf

The habit of presenting the candidates in a political election like horses in a race ensures drama and excitement and has therefore proven popular with the media especially during a campaign. For several years, communication and political science have been criticizing the media’s election coverage for not emphasizing the issues but focusing instead on the candidates’ relative standing in the polls. This horse race journalism is said to replace content by entertainment. The assumption that this format has increased over the past years and also grows within a single election year as the election approaches has now been reassessed empirically. A comparison of the two major German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of the years 1976 and 2005 revealed surprising findings: the share of the horse-racing format in election campaign coverage is considerably lower than expected and has increased only a little within the past three decades. Quantity has apparently been overestimated, at least considering high-quality newspapers. Therefore it has to be asked whether the newsworthiness of horse racing leads to exceeding consumption and in consequence to a biased perception by its critics.