Cision, an industry-leading earned media communications management and media advisory platform, published the latest data from its 2020 State of the Election blog series, a weekly nonpartisan media analysis of the U.S. presidential election. This week, Cision highlights media coverage surrounding key voter issues from the last 90 days, along with identifying the events that led to spikes in coverage.
“Now just a day away from the election, we were curious to see how the media narratives have evolved since Cision’s last analysis of key voting issues in September,” said Seth Gilpin, Product Marketing Manager at Cision. “Using our own media monitoring tools has highlighted the type of impact that PR and comms professionals can discover and share from long term analyses.”
National media coverage of key voting issues
Key report findings include:
- Of all the voter issues Cision tracked, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death received the most single-day coverage in the last 90 days with nearly 19k stories.
- Healthcare news is rising, with healthcare mentions up 61% and social shares up 265%.
- In October, racial inequality coverage was down 41% compared to September; however, social shares on the same subject were up 19%.
- Trump received 2.3x more headlines than Biden in swing states.
- In the last 90 days, there were more than 750K articles written about the economy, which was declared the number one issue for voters according to Pew Research. While the coverage is consistent week after week, there were factors like job reports, record stock prices, and the delay of the pandemic stimulus package that created spikes in coverage.
This week’s analysis also looks at how local media in eight swing states are covering the election. Though the amount of coverage for each issue varies by state, the top three voting issues across the board are COVID-19, the economy, and healthcare.
For more from Cision’s State of the Election blog series, view the full media analysis and subscribe to the series here.
Cision is politically unaffiliated and does not endorse any political parties, platforms, campaigns or candidates.
