Narratives of a Race

Abstract

The first debate in 2008 was a turning point in the presidential election campaign: a race that was close before the debate turned decisively in Obama’s favor following it. This article explores how the media reached their verdict that “Obama won.” We examine two aspects of this problem: how, in practice, the media reached this verdict and whether they made the right decision from a normative standpoint. Based on content analysis of debate transcripts, we argue that the media interpreted the debate by synthesizing three pre-debate narratives in roughly equal proportions. Crucially, two of these narratives favored Obama. We also find that the “Obama won” verdict was consistent with what we might expect had the debate been judged by a public-spirited umpire.