California Sen. Kamala Harris has moved into the top tier of 2020 contenders in terms of media attention. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo 2020 Elections These 4 Democrats dominate the 2020 media primary Newspaper headlines and social media mentions are concentrated on just a handful of the 21 contenders for president.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders — the front-runners in most presidential primary polls — have generated a torrent of news coverage since the beginning of the year.

But so has Elizabeth Warren. And Kamala Harris is showing up everywhere.


From Jan. 1 to April 30, four candidates — Sanders, Biden, Harris and Warren — accounted for more than half the primary field’s traditional news media mentions, according to a data analysis conducted for POLITICO by the media intelligence company Meltwater. And Sanders and Harris together accounted for nearly half of the primary field’s social media footprint.

Harris and Warren were surpassed only by Sanders in traditional news media mentions, though they announced their candidacies relatively early in the year, giving them more time to amass coverage.

The data — drawn from hundreds of thousands of online news sources globally, ranging from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal to broadcast news websites, local outlets and community newspapers — offer a revealing window on which candidates have had sustained attention across news cycles and which ones are struggling to generate break-out media coverage in a crowded Democratic primary field.



Morning Media Your guide to the media circus — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.



The Meltwater analysis also reinforces the uncertainty of a contest in which name recognition for all but a handful of candidates remains relatively low — with relatively diffuse media coverage below the highest tier.

Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker each accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of the field’s total share of news mentions in the first four months of the year, according to Meltwater. And Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg, despite their splashy reputations, do not appear to have benefited from an inordinate amount of coverage. Neither candidate accounted for more than 5 percent of the field’s traditional news mentions.

Meltwater’s analysis of traditional news mentions counts a name appearing in a story as a mention, and when stories are syndicated across multiple websites, a candidate is counted as being mentioned multiple times.

“Visibility is crucial for all of these candidates,” said Rose Kapolczynski, a top California-based Democratic strategist who is not involved in the 2020 campaign. “Growing your name ID, even if the article is neutral, helps you make your way into the top tier, and it reinforces for your current supporters that you have a shot at it, so they’re more likely to volunteer, they’re more likely to give money, they’re more likely to share your content.”

For lower-tier candidates searching for a platform, it is even more difficult to find a foothold on social media — where the leading candidates’ advantages are more pronounced. Combined, Sanders and Harris accounted for nearly 50 percent of social media mentions related to the 2020 contenders since Jan. 1, according to a Meltwater analysis of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and other social media sources.

They were followed in social media share by Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, O’Rourke and Booker. No other candidate received more than 5 percent of the field’s social media share.

“Media outlets have an obligation to provide news coverage on all candidates, which helps increase the exposure of lower profile candidates,” said John Box, executive director of social at Meltwater. “Social on the other hand, is a fire hose of public opinion, so those candidates with less name recognition can struggle to cut through the noise.”

Media attention, like fundraising, often tracks with major events, such as a well-received town hall or a candidate’s announcement that he or she is running. Buttigieg, the fast-rising mayor of South Bend, Ind., was drawing just over 2 percent of traditional news coverage and about 3 percent of social media mentions in the first three months of the year, according to Meltwater.

After a breakout appearance at a CNN town hall in March, he captured 9 percent of the traditional news share in April and 13 percent of its social media output that month.

“Whether it’s social media, or news coverage, the question is, is not how much chatter there is, but is it translating into votes?” asked Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist and top adviser to Sanders in 2016.

Still, social media mentions, he said, are an important dimension on the fundraising front.

“It leads to contributions,” he said.

Dan Sena, who as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee helped orchestrate the House takeover in 2018, framed the social media shares as an important “brand lift” for the 2020 Democrats: “If there is anything we learned from ’16, it’s that the social conversation matters and can impact the vote.”

But there are limitations in pinpointing the electoral significance, Sena said: “The challenge is the geography; and the who-is-sharing is murky.” Plus, he added, “there are still huge questions around what actually drives the vote.”

The count of media mentions in the study does not account for whether a story is positive, neutral or casts a candidate in a more negative light. Some studies have shown early presidential coverage of women candidates to be more negative than their male counterparts.

There are many factors outside the control of the candidates that drive news coverage — notably President Donald Trump himself, who with a quip or a tweet can help set off a news cycle. Trump’s criticisms of Biden have pulled the front-runner into several early tit-for-tats; and Trump during rallies has been unrelenting in his attacks on Sanders and Warren.

In recent weeks, Trump has twice used the word “nasty” in response to Harris, including after her tough questioning of Attorney General Bill Barr. Afterward, Harris called for Barr to resign — and increased her spending on Facebook ads by roughly six times over the previous week, to nearly $300,000.

The media attention Democrats have mustered generally falls in line with other measures of the 2020 primary, from polling performance to the large crowds that top-tier candidates are drawing to the investments that they have made in social media.

Biden, Sanders, Warren and Harris are the top four candidates, according to Morning Consult’s most recent presidential primary poll.

Sanders has been turning out supporters by the thousands, while Harris and Warren have consistently attracted some of the largest audiences of the Democratic presidential field since their first events earlier this year.

Two thousand people turned out for Warren’s organizing event in Salt Lake City, Utah, and 1,500 came to see the Massachusetts senator at her event in Aurora, Colo. She spoke before 600 people in Hanover, N.H., and 450 in Beaufort, S.C.

Harris, who has held fewer town halls, is also packing them in. More than 900 turned out for her in Iowa City. She had 3,000 people in Atlanta and nearly 2,500 in Houston over a pair of weekend events in late March. Earlier in the year, some 1,500 visited a church in Portsmouth, N.H., while 1,150 turned out for recent stops at Keane State College and Dartmouth.

Harris’ first visits to Charleston and Columbia each generated crowds of 1,000 people. During her own first trip to South Carolina, Warren spoke to a jammed hall at Columbia College.

“There were 1,000 people in that room who came to hear her and a lot of them were standing,” recalled Trav Robertson, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, of the Warren event.

As the nasty weather delayed Harris’ arrival in Rock Hill, S.C., by nearly two hours, Robertson stood in the back of the room noting the number of visitors still dribbling in to Winthrop University.

“Think about it, it’s Good Friday, it’s raining outside, and you’ve got [so many] people that there aren’t enough chairs,” Robertson said.

Harris, who began spending significant money two years ago to build out her online presence, is now essentially on par in social media with Sanders, who leads a progressive movement and is on his second presidential campaign. Other candidates have ways to drawing attention, too.

“Some are doing that by rolling out regular policy proposals; others are picking fights; and others will do that by creating compelling moments for social media,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who worked as deputy national press secretary to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Longabaugh said of Warren’s high number of media mentions: “A lot of people have been discounting her and I think she’s had several very good weeks. And it’s interesting the amount of news coverage that it’s driven.”

By and large, the coverage reflects public interest, with the ebbs and flows of media attention conforming “to what the people are interested in,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist based in New York.

“That which is exciting remains exciting over a particular period of time,” he said. “And that which is boring becomes more boring.”

