Political handicapping


The terms horse race and handicapping the horse race, have been used to describe media coverage of elections. The terms refer to any news story or article whose main focus is describing how a particular candidate or candidates is faring during the election, in other words, trying to predict the outcome. This category includes polls. There is a thin line between a horse race news story and a non horse race news story. For example, an article simply describing a candidate's economic policy is a non horse race article, but an article which is about how certain groups of voters are angry at a candidate's economic policy is a horse race article.

Criticisms of horse race coverage

Critics of the news media say that the vast majority of all articles during a political election are horse race style. Different criticisms have been raised as to why that is bad: