Kingmaking in Ohio

Posted on October 1, 2011 by rschuck

In Perspectives on Political Communication, Bell, Conners, and Sheckels describe kingmaking as “identifying the serious contenders in an election” (60).  This story from The Toledo Blade about whom Ohio voters favor in a couple of elections provides a good example of this concept.  It indicates that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry run first and second in a recent poll of Ohio Republican voters, while not even mentioning any other Republican candidates by name.  Meanwhile, it also establishes State Treasurer Josh Mandel as the frontrunner to be the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat from Ohio that is up for election in 2012.  In the process, the story’s coverage of the poll, including the way in which it frames the poll’s results, identifies Romney and Perry as the only serious contenders not only for the Republican nomination for president in general, but for the Ohio primary winner during this coming spring’s primary season.  Indeed, at one point, it even literally says, “At this point, it appears to be a two-person race.” It also identifies Mandel as the main contender to be the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat and run against Democrat Sherrod Brown, while only noting Mandel and state senator Kevin Coughlin as serious contenders.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Kingmaking in Ohio

  1. danem says:
    October 17, 2011 at 11:50 am

    The blog post I wrote also describes how the media has been making the Republican presidential race a two man race. However, I used the pack journalism theory in my evaluation because I find it to be more influential than kingmaking in an election. I think that kingmaking by the media is irrelevant in this particular case because, if you look at the polls only a week later, Herman Cain is now the front runner of all the candidates. I believe this shows that people made up their own mind about who won, or who lost the debate and didn’t allow the media to do it for them. I believe that most people, especially in the attentive public of politics are going to make up their own mind about what they believe.

  2. mccunec says:
    October 17, 2011 at 4:04 pm

    I think it is scary how big of a say the media has when it comes to government officials being elected. If you think about the media can elected really whoever they want through kingmaking. It’s like whoever they give the most air time and positive publicity will have the best shot at winning an election. I feel that the media tried to perform some type of kingmaking with New Jersey governor Chris Christie because I saw a lot of coverage on him about how if he does run he could be the republican candidate. However he stated that he will not run in the 2012 election.

Comments are closed.