Horse-Race Journalism: Reporting the Polls in the 1976 Presidential Election

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Abstract
Reporting of public opinion polls conformed to a horse-race image of campaign reporting during the 1976 presidential election. Journalists avoided prediction, reported segments of the sample, selectively compared results, emphasized spectacles, questioned the validity of polling, made a few mistakes, and ignored certain data in their reporting. All these activities reinforced the image of elections as a sporting event.

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