Covering the Median Voter in Congress

Authors

  • Brian J. Fogarty University of Missouri-St. Louis

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2013.34.0.65-84

Abstract

Political communication and congressional politics scholars have seemingly long settled the question of who in Congress receives national news attention. Party leaders, committee chairs and ranking members, and influential senators typically dominate national news attention. In this paper, I argue that scholars also need to consider the median voter in the House and the filibuster pivot in the Senate to gain a clearer understanding of national media coverage of Congress and its members. The results suggest that members do not receive more coverage simply from being the median voter or the filibuster pivot. Instead, the median voter in the House receives more attention when the majorities in the House are slim and thus the median voter is potentially more important. In the Senate, the filibuster pivot garners more attention from the national media, again conditioned on party margins, than other senators.

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Published

2016-09-08

Issue

Vol. 34: Summer 2013

Section

Articles

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