Markos noted this in his open thread yesterday, but I thought it was worthy of a little more attention here at MyDD as well. Take a look at these numbers from Pew:
The competition for media exposure between Barack Obama and John McCain was much closer last week than in the past several months of the presidential campaign. During much of the primary campaign and in the weeks since the general election kicked-off in early June, Barack Obama has consistently received more media attention than his Republican rival, John McCain. By contrast last week, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's Campaign Coverage Index, Obama was featured prominently in 73% of all campaign news stories while McCain was featured in 62% of all stories.Despite greater parity in the coverage devoted to each candidate, Obama remained by far the most visible candidate in the eyes of the public. Seven-in-ten Americans (71%) named Obama as the candidate they've been hearing the most about in the news in the past week or so. Roughly one-in-ten (11%) named John McCain as the most visible candidate in the news during this period; a number largely unchanged since early June.
Looking at the numbers (.pdf) dating back to March, at no point in the last four months have more than 12 percent of respondents in Pew polling said that they have heard more about John McCain than other presidential candidates. During that time, Barack Obama's number has dropped below 45 percent just once -- and not below 67 percent since early June. The graph on Pew's write up of its survey goes back even further to January, but during the last six plus months McCain hasn't been viewed as the news leader by more than about 15 percent of the public.
These numbers are important. Obviously, the fact that about 70 percent of Americans are hearing more about Obama while just 11 percent are hearing more about McCain does not mean that Obama is going to win the race for the White House by a similarly large margin. But these numbers nevertheless should be a cause for concern for the McCain campaign.
Common wisdom may hold that they only way McCain can win is if this election is about Obama rather than McCain or George W. Bush. But I'm not so certain that this reasoning is all that dead on. For those watching the cable nets, it might seem as though McCain has been driving the coverage and the narrative so far during the first month of the general election campaign. And yet that is not sinking in to the American public. Far from it, indeed.
With so few voters paying attention to McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee still runs the risk of being defined by others rather than himself. Clearly, his own efforts have failed to grab the imagination of Americans. The Obama campaign, and progressives more broadly, still have to work to make the most of this opportunity provided by the McCain campaign's (and McCain as a candidate) inability to take center stage in this election. But for now it sure seems like there's a wide window open to define McCain before he defines himself -- a window that could lead right to the presidency for Obama.
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