I don’t know how much this is a real phenomenon, but the media have proved over and over and over that THEY BELIEVE that by convincing the public about an outcome of an election that they can influence it in that direction.
It makes sense to some degree, but I don’t know how much it has been studied or proven to be true. If you can convince voters who vote one way that the other side will win, a certain percentage of them will stay home. No?
The media have been wrong in the past, but there is no greater proof of how much they want to project the wrong message and influence an election, you only need to look at their behavior running up to the 2016 presidential election.
Sometimes I go back and watch the election news from election night. It’s funny to see the shock and awe as they reported, in real time, the “bad” news, bad from their point of view. Those media people looked like they were reporting on a tragedy of some kind.
They were shocked and stunned as state after state went for Trump. They couldn’t believe it.
During elections, especially in Executive Election years, democrats are always going to turn out the votes they can buy. Only the weather really changes the consistency of the liberal voter turnout.
Republican voters are different. They are more sensitive to the candidates and the issues. Most of us (maybe all) have held our nose and pulled a lever for the lesser of evils. But we are country, issue and candidate driven.
In this way, these days, the media can really only hurt the democratic voters and motivate the republican voters (at least on a national scale). Is the media going to affect voting outcomes in California? New York? Etc. But poke fun at the Midwest or Texas, vilify Chic-fil-a or bash bible toting, gun loving Christians and watch Republican voters patiently stand in line to prove them wrong.
There is something to the silent majority. But the media hasn’t figured it out yet, still.