Specious assumption. My conclusion is that the favorability ratings are bullshit.
To posit that a huge media conspiracy has caused millions of voters to vote huge, huge landslides in favor of these two people is just ridiculous compared with the probability that measuring very complex and ineffable metrics like "favorability" is a total crapshoot, especially in a world where voters like myself (and many HNers, I suspect) do not have landlines, use ad-blockers, do not click on advertising online and do not fill out surveys.
Tl;dr the likelihood of media influence controlling this election to such huge, huge landslide outcomes is overwhelmingly improbable compared to the high likelihood that favorability metrics are junk-science.
Overwhelmingly improbable? Oh man! What is that likelihood?
Please dont masquerade your opinions as facts by using terms like "likelihood" and "improbable".
I have one question for you. If media influence over elections is so "unlikely" and so insignificant why would the NYT have tripped over itself to retitle and reword their article to make it seem like pro-Bernie?
Media influence is real. You will quickly notice after speaking to people outside your bubble that the average voters political almost always conform to that of the "pundits".
Your example, the NYT, is quoted on TV and radio every single day, in and out of the US. Add to that the number of private who quote, forward, regurgitate-as-if-they-thought-of-it the articles.
The power of the mainstream media is waning, but it is still more significant than anything else, other parts of the Internet included, in swaying voters.
Most people don't know Bernie, Hillary and Donald personally, so the only way to get an impression is the media.
Just the lazy way.
By using... words?
The irony.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/03/15/ny-times-trumps-mamm...
Beyond that, the media coverage of Clinton and Trump are overwhelmingly negative. All I see on TV is "how to stop Trump" and "is Hillary a lying liar who lies?"
Primary election results do not support this theory. Clinton has very high favorability among self-declared Democrats, something like 70-80 % off the top of my head. Her favorability declines fast with Independents and Republican voters. I don't have the data in front of me but I could bet Sanders won independent vote in every primary where independents were allowed to vote, notably Michigan. Noone can't say if it's favorability only but correlation is hard to dispute.
Independent favorability: Sanders 50-39, Clinton 31-60 (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cdh1L0vXEAEokgY.jpg:large)
Worth noting that among independents, Clinton has a net -29 which is second worst only to Trump at -32, and is worse than Cruz at -27.
Political polling and surveys have a margin of error, and its generally pretty close to the mark.
Trump and Hillary have had by far and away the most advertising for their campaigns, and generally the ones with the biggest ad spends (which has in the past converted into the most advertising, but Trump has gotten enormous free advertising) win elections.
My conclusion is that there is no media conspiracy, they just like getting paid and both Trump and Hillary make that happen.
If Trump had the same advertising as he could afford I dont think he would have been in the same position he is in now.
And at the risk of stating the obvious, finding someone as more favorable than their opponent doesn't necessarily imply I will vote for them in an election.
Occam's Razor might suggest people are voting for Clinton and Trump due to name recognition and previous primary results.
This observation is at the heart of Trump's calculus. Awareness, awareness, awareness. How do you get awareness? Through reach and frequency of your exposure to the public. How do you get reach and frequency? Media. How do you get free media? Say crazy shit. Be outrageous. Be different.
Awareness, awareness, awareness. It is nine tenths of the battle, especially in the primaries.
Things like favorability only matter once you've cleared the awareness hurdle. And that hurdle is quite high; it's often a lot higher than campaign managers or media pundits expect. In fact, the more disengaged people are from election coverage, the less aware they are of who the candidates are, and the more important it is to get in front of them through any means possible. Someone like Clinton or Trump has had, what, 9 billion chances to get in front of the average person at this point.
Another key to Trump's success has been hijacking the non-election news cycle. You only hear about John Kasich if you're watching or reading political news, and since many people are not, that sucks for John Kasich. But you hear about Donald Trump pretty much anytime and anywhere; he is inescapably in all aspects of the news across all outlets.
This is as anecdotal as it gets, but to your point. In a recent political discussion one of my co-workers had no idea how to pronounce Kasich's name. If he was all over the news, this would not be a problem.
> "Be outrageous. Be different."
Or be a Clinton.
Exactly.
Both Trump and Clinton have preexisting celebrity going for them, and Trump fuels that fire with a steady trickle of media-baiting tactics.
No. What you're saying there is that older people vote Clinton, younger people vote Sanders. There isn't any evidence to tie that to people's media habits, and "younger people vote for more liberal candidates than older people" has been true since time immemorial.
It's a real shame he isn't younger. With the name recognition built up from this cycle he could probably do well in the next election, but he is way too old to be thinking about running again in 8 years. Even this year was pushing it a bit. Being President ages a man 20 years.
Really, the only way Bernie ends up with the nod now is if Hillary ends up in jail, and that's just not going to happen. David Petraeus is still a free man, and nothing Hillary has been accused of is even close to what he did.
I don't understand -- the parent comment [0] seemed quite NPV, fact-based (albeit lacking in citational support), and non-argumentative.
More simply, just look at the average age of a voter, they are not young people.
Despite not having a deep warm-fuzzy for Trump or Hillary (thus increasing their favorability ratings), they represent something to their acolytes. It makes sense and defies scapegoats like "they are media sheeple!"
One of the most common ones I've encountered is asking someone why they feel they can trust a particular candidate, when here's a giant list of things implicating them in corruption, lies, and indisputably voting opposite of how they campaigned. The response is always "All politicians are corrupt, it's just part of the system". Or "anyone running for President isn't the type of person who should actually be a President". Anything counter to these people's gut beliefs is dismissed as "everyone has that same problem", ignoring the extent to which their choice has it.
I don't think there is anything in common between the two, from personalities, party affiliation, to how they conduct themselves in public.
Hillary was also born with money (albeit less than Trump) and was a Goldwater Republican before the antiwar tide became too big to fight.
(Party affiliation of political personalities in the US is a joke. See also: Joe Lieberman, another guy living in the same NY circles as Trump and Clinton. Don't take labels seriously, look at the policy, and you'll see the differences between Clinton and Trump are mostly cosmetic.)
To me, media is an obvious one. Turner Broadcasting is a major corporate donor to Clinton, and the NYT is all but falling over themselves to build connections with a Clinton administration.
Another similarity is neither Clinton or Trump care that much about consistency, which makes them much shinier objects to cover. See this article for a rare example of the NYT even being unable to notice Hillary's flip flopping: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/campaign-stops/...