As we approach Election Day, you may have noticed something familiar creeping back into the news – polls, data and statistics. And political reporters endlessly parsing all that and speculating who’s up and who’s down. You might have heard it referred to as horse race journalism. At Poynter, Annie Aguiar did a little experiment with the concept and asked actual horse-race journalists what they thought of it.
Horse racing is a sport that evolved from primitive contests of speed or stamina between two horses into an enormous public-entertainment business that involves huge fields of runners, sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment and immense sums of money. Despite all that, the essential feature of a horse race remains unchanged: The horse who crosses the finish line first is the winner.
The modern version of the horse race is a series of races called a “stadium race.” The field of runners is limited by rules that specify eligibility based on age, sex, birthplace and distance of previous races. The winner of each race earns a certain amount of prize money, which is divided between the owner and trainer. The winner of the final race of a season is crowned champion.
While we’re surrounded by the romanticized facade of a horse race, behind the scenes there are injuries, drugs and breakdowns, and, in some cases, gruesome deaths. Horses are bred, raised and trained to run at speeds that can lead to a variety of medical problems, including fractured legs, hemorrhage in the lungs and broken bones. And while some may argue that the animals have little choice but to reach the starting gate and run, this argument ignores the fact that the horses are whipped to make them go faster, and that many of them suffer from pain and fear while running.
Likewise, when journalists frame elections as a horse race, voters, the candidates and the news industry itself suffer, according to a growing body of research. This updated roundup of research examines the consequences of this type of reporting — sometimes known as horse race journalism — by looking at research on third-party candidates, probabilistic forecasting and TV news coverage.