Lost in the Crowd: The Effect of Volatile Fields on Presidential Primaries

Abstract

All candidates attempt to convey agendas through the media, but presidential primary contenders face distinctive conditions. Do these conditions affect candidates’ ability to transmit their agendas through the media? Drawing on theories of journalism norms, I argue that media responsiveness to a candidate’s agenda will, on average, decrease as the primary campaign goes on and candidates’ messages become less timely. Expansions in the size of the field should create more complicated electoral races, leading to declining contextual simplicity and less overlap between candidate and media agendas. I test these hypotheses using a novel dataset of primary candidates’ speeches and news articles about those candidates. I show that the entrance of new candidates is correlated with a decline in convergence. Contrary to expectations, there is no decline in convergence over time. The results have implications for how nomination contests should be structured in the era of media-oriented campaigns.