What Data Tells Us About the 2016 Presidential Election

Throughout the presidential campaigns, we’ve analyzed media coverage of the election to try to understand what the data shows when it comes Trump vs. Clinton. Along the way, we’ve asked if there really is a correlation between coverage of a candidate and other factors, such as page views and poll numbers.

Read on for an overview of what we found in our 2016 election media data analysis.

The Scale: Election Media Coverage is Massive

Our data scientists analyzed over 2.8 billion page views from more than 300 media organizations beginning on November 2, 2015. Donald Trump received far higher coverage than any other candidate.

Here’s pageview volume by day:

Initially, data indicated that readers were more interested in stories about Clinton. Between November 2015 and May 2016, an article on Hillary Clinton received six percent more page views than an article on Donald Trump.

Starting in June however, articles featuring Trump quickly took over both in volume and views per article.

All in all, the total volume of Trump/Clinton news has massively surpassed any other topic across our entire network.

Election Data in the News

What else has the data shown? Check out these discussions sparked by election data on the Parse.ly blog and around the web. You can also manipulate the data yourself through the election dashboard.