Calling Elections: The History of Horse-Race Journalism

Abstract

Calling Elections: The History of Horse-Race Journalism is the story of the origins and evolution of the horse-race tradition of political journalism in the United States. Thomas B. Littlewood examines how the treatment of elections as sporting events has come to overshadow the reporting of the campaign as a forum for the discussion of ideas. He suggests reasons for the perception of presidential elections as spectator sport: the historical interconnections between gambling, politics, and the press; the infusion of sports language into political rhetoric; the government spoils system that gives individuals and businesses a financial stake in the status of the contest; the methodological development of scientific polling; the fiercely declared independence of many formerly partisan organizations; the perverse conviction of many journalists in the early 1900s that substantive politics was not interesting to news consumers and that partisan speech belonged in the paid advertising columns of the newspaper. Political scientists, journalists, sociologists, American Studies scholars, and all those interested in the past, and upcoming, presidential elections will find much to ponder in Calling Elections: The History of Horse-Race Journalism.

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