Campaign News Draws More Coverage than Interest

Public interest in the presidential campaign showed no increase this week, despite the news media’s increasing coverage of sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain.

About one-in-five Americans (22%) say they followed news about the 2012 candidates very closely, little changed from a week earlier (21%), according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted Nov. 3-6 among 1,005 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Still, the Cain allegations registered widely with the public: 75% say they heard a lot (51%) or a little (24%) about the accusations that Cain sexually harassed several women in the late 1990s when he served as president of the National Restaurant Association. In terms of the week’s top stories, as many followed news about the economy most closely (14%) as followed campaign news most closely (16%). Another 12% cite news about the freak snowstorm that hit the East Coast as their top story. Meanwhile, coverage of the campaign accounted for 29% of all news coverage, up from only 18% a week earlier, according to a content analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). About two-thirds of campaign coverage dealt with the controversy surrounding Cain and its potential impact on the race (20% of all coverage).