Horse race journalism is known to be a very negative subject in politics, but can be useful during
primaries in American elections. Although it does show the standings of a poll or caucus, it fails to display the strengths/weaknesses of each politician. Media outlets have often used horse-race journalism with the intent of making elections appear more competitive and thus increasing the odds of gaining larger audiences while covering
election campaigns. Political scientists and strategists argue that elections are more often decided by underlying factors than by the campaign. In the 1980s,
Allan Lichtman and
Vladimir Keilis-Borok devised the
Keys to the White House model for predicting United States presidential elections, which took into account events of the incumbent presidency and the economy, but not the strategies and events of the campaign.
Shanto Iyengar similarly argued in 2005 that while campaign strategies can have an effect, "The results of presidential elections can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy from indicators of economic growth and public approval of the incumbent administration."
Mark Pack, a British politician and former campaign manager, noted that in 14 of the 16 United Kingdom general elections from 1964 to 2019, the party leading most polls in the previous January subsequently won the most votes. He likened the last month before election day to "the last few minutes" of a sports game. A 2018 study in the
American Political Science Review found that campaigning methods do not usually influence an election outcome, and can only do so under specific conditions. This form of political coverage involves
politically handicapping stronger candidates and hyping
dark horse contenders who are widely regarded as
underdogs when election cycles begin.
Benjamin Disraeli used the term "dark horse" to describe horse racing in 1831 in The Young Duke, writing, "a dark horse which had never been thought of and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph." Political analyst
Larry Sabato stated in his 2006 book
Encyclopedia of American Political Parties and Elections that Disraeli's description of dark horses "now fits in neatly with the media's trend towards horse-race journalism and penchant for using sports analogies to describe presidential politics." Horse race coverage can shape how people see candidates, creating a
vicious cycle. For example, if a poll shows a third-party candidate with low support, some voters might avoid backing them to prevent a
spoiler effect. This gets worse when media outlets have a
bias they want to promote. They might use tactics like vague claims about public outrage or use
weasel words to push their narrative and influence opinions. ==In United States presidential elections==