The 2020 Democratic Primaries July Update

To continue our political media monitoring and tracking of the US Democratic Party presidential primaries and our June update, here we track and analyse media coverage for the major democratic candidates in the month of July.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), we have tracked every time the candidates are referred to in the media throughout July. As the race is moving on, this month we are expanding our index. We’ve conducted a deep-dive into media coverage in Iowa, where the first of the Democratic caucuses and primaries will take place.

The race so far

	Names	January	February	March	April	May	June	July	Total
1	Joe Biden	35,013	39,503	86,798	222,381	141,761	250,201	158,245	933,902
2	Bernie Sanders	62,561	102,206	114,354	152,935	96,134	165,180	143,669	837,039
3	Elizabeth Warren	72,760	87,679	72,659	81,153	69,239	137,657	123,858	645,005
4	Kamala Harris	56,003	65,809	44,803	50,007	48,010	90,669	97,653	452,954
5	Cory Booker	17,824	58,604	35,835	35,361	34,522	74,253	44,848	301,247
6	Beto O’Rourke	14,532	24,821	63,706	37,240	24,371	57,457	36,055	258,182
7	Pete Buttigieg	4,542	6,262	14,062	54,390	41,685	66,061	49,080	236,082
8	Bill de Blasio	15,433	23,498	15,422	18,691	29,261	49,048	43,725	195,078
9	Amy Klobuchar	12,142	37,552	28,557	24,447	23,070	38,680	27,130	191,578
10	Kirsten Gillibrand	29,258	32,835	28,133	20,145	19,479	31,705	22,976	184,531
11	Julian Castro	19,727	10,266	10,418	11,036	9,514	35,399	26,836	123,196
12	Jay Inslee	9,938	9,225	21,534	17,031	19,187	27,220	14,410	118,545
13	Tulsi Gabbard	16,963	11,781	8,241	7,001	6,385	19,845	12,815	83,031
14	John Hickenlooper	3,681	3,310	19,139	7,988	7,860	20,847	18,792	81,617
15	Eric Swalwell	2,769	3,594	4,604	12,633	8,722	22,127	16,120	70,569
16	John Delaney	6,013	4,009	8,074	6,139	3,850	20,880	18,722	67,687
17	Tim Ryan	3,809	2,694	2,666	12,096	4,959	18,550	15,371	60,145
18	Steve Bullock	3,118	2,806	2,835	2,972	12,152	12,059	19,508	55,450
19	Michael Bennet	3,516	3,009	3,102	4,116	10,658	16,385	10,806	51,592
20	Andrew Yang	1,349	1,862	5,106	8,003	5,443	16,972	10,635	49,370
21	Marianne Williamson	553	1,593	1,651	3,055	3,184	16,701	19,460	46,197
22	Seth Moulton	1,125	1,252	1,541	8,460	6,111	9,555	6,884	34,928
23	Wayne Messam	32	58	1,142	1,504	1,585	4,528	1,569	10,418
24	Mike Gravel	74	66	432	815	1,164	2,652	1,479	6,682

Space

Democrat Total

392,735

534,294

594,814

799,599

628,306

1,204,631

940,646

5,095,025

Space

Donald Trump

1,796,907

1,692,777

1,512,986

1,402,007

1,779,760

2,090,901

1,910,007

12,185,345

July

July saw less coverage on the primaries than June (around 75% of June’s total).

	Names	July
1	Joe Biden	158,245
2	Bernie Sanders	143,669
3	Elizabeth Warren	123,858
4	Kamala Harris	97,653
5 (+1)	Pete Buttigieg	49,080
6 (-1)	Cory Booker	44,848
7 (+1)	Bill de Blasio	43,725
8 (-1)	Beto O’Rourke	36,055
9	Amy Klobuchar	27,130
10	Julian Castro	26,836

Iowa

We have tracked the coverage of the candidates in 45 Iowan news sources. We analysed the number of pieces each candidate is in, the number of unique references to each candidate, and the sentiment towards each candidate in every news piece they appear in.

For an explanation of our methodology in examining sentiment, and a list of the 45 outlets examined, see below.

Following the dramatic spike in coverage of Kamala Harris in June, we wanted to investigate her prominence in the media in Iowa. While she is a close fourth in the US as a whole, the data from Iowa suggests that until recently she has been lagging behind Biden, Sanders and Warren.

Additionally, Elizabeth Warren was in the lead alongside Sanders and Biden in Iowa. However, she hasn’t been able to sustain this. The articles that she has been appearing in mention her less often than other top candidates. (See below in the comparison of total mentions to total number of articles.)

The last two months have been seen Biden and Sanders jostling for the top spot. But in the wake of the July debates Sanders has over taken Biden.

This data is available upon request, simply email [email protected].

Sentiment

When analysing the sentiment of news coverage in Iowa, it suggests that Biden is the most divisive candidate. When compared to coverage of Sanders and Warren, a similar number of articles reflect on him positively. However, significantly more bear negative sentiment towards him.

In fact, almost 12% of articles towards Biden were negative. This is significantly more than the next candidate, Hickenlooper, with just over 7%.

Candidates with an exceptionally high portion of positive coverage include Bullock and Castro. Moulton and Tang were the only candidates with more negative coverage than positive.

Sentiment Methodology

Signal AI’s sentiment model assesses sentiment at the ‘entity’ level. This means it is able to detect sentiment for more than one organisation, person, or location in the same article. For this project, our AI has been trained to recognise the candidates as entities. For more information on what an entity is see here.

Our AI seeks to recognise words or phrases against a dictionary built by our researchers based on state-of-the-art linguistics research. Each word or phrase in the dictionary has a sentiment ‘intensity’ attached to it, on a scale of -1 to +1. The AI also negates double negative sentiment (for example, “not bad” is seen as a positive phrase) and overrides known colloquialisms (“that’s sick” becomes positive).

Sentiment from each individual word/phrase is combined to give the article an overall sentiment score for each entity based on its mentions, where:

• 1 negative mention renders the whole article negative for that entity.
• 1 positive and 0 negative mentions renders the whole article positive for that entity.
• No positive or negative mentions renders the whole article neutral for that entity.

Iowan source list

• ABC – 8 WQAD
• Boone News-Republican
• Britt News Tribune
• Clarinda Herald-Journal
• Daily Democrat
• Daily Gate City
• Daily Iowan
• Daily Iowegian & Ad Express
• Dallas County News
• Denison Bulletin & Review
• Des Moines Business Record
• Des Moines Cityview
• Des Moines Register
• Explore SEiowa.com
• Forest City Summit
• Fort Dodge Messenger
• Globe Gazette
• Hamburg Reporter
• Iowa City Press-Citizen
• Iowa Economic Dev
• Iowa Farm Bureau
• Iowa Farmer Today
• Iowa Hawkeye Sports
• Iowa Senate Democratic Caucus
• Iowa State Daily
• Iowapublicradio.org
• Kalona News
• Muscatine Journal
• NBC – 13 WHO
• Nevada Journal
• Osceola Sentinel-Tribune
• Ottumwa Courier
• Radio Iowa
• Sioux City Journal
• Siouxland Matters
• Telegraph Herald
• The Daily Nonpareil
• The Des Moines Register
• The Gazette
• The Quad-City Times
• The Tribune
• Tri-County Times
• Valley News Today
• Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
• WeAreIowa.co

Image Source: Cropped use of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking with attendees at the 2019 National Forum on Wages and Working People hosted by the Center for the American Progress Action Fund and the SEIU at the Enclave in Las Vegas, Nevada (27 April 2019), by Gage Skidmore via flickr.com.

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