ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses various aspects of the methodologies of the election polls and the procedures the media use to analyze and interpret their meaning. It looks at the 19th century describing and critiquing the manner in which the American media incorporated public opinion "sampling" into their coverage of presidential election campaigns. The book discusses the largest content analysis to date of the front page usage of pre-election poll findings by prominent American daily newspapers. It deals with an in-depth analysis of the ways that journalists have come to incorporate social science techniques into election campaign coverage. The book provides the most detailed publicly available explanation of exit polling methods. It describes the public's reaction to news coverage of the 1992 election campaign using findings from the polls that were commissioned to study this issue by the Times Mirror Center.
