Overexposure

by digby

Pew has a poll out today saying that nearly half the country has “Obama fatigue”

As he has since January, this week, Barack Obama enjoyed much more visibility as far as the public was concerned than did John McCain. By a margin of 76% to 11% respondents in Pew’s weekly News Interest Index survey named Obama over McCain as the candidate they have heard the most about in recent days. But the same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate’s media dominance may not be working in his favor. Close to half (48%) of Pew’s interviewees went on to say that they have been hearing too much about Obama lately. And by a slight, but statistically significant margin – 22% to 16% – people say that recently they have a less rather than more favorable view of the putative Democratic nominee.

In contrast, if anything, Pew’s respondents said they want to hear more, not less about the Republican candidate. Just 26% in the poll said they had heard too much about McCain, while a larger number (38%) reported that they had heard too little about the putative Republican candidate. However, as for Obama, a slight plurality reports that recently they have come to have a less favorable view of McCain rather than a more favorable view of him – (23% to 18%).

Not surprisingly, a very large number of Republicans say they have heard too much about Obama lately. But 51% of independents shared this opinion, and as many as a third of Democrats thought so too.

[…]

For the first time this year, John McCain attracted nearly as much media attention as his Democratic rival, Barack Obama. For the week of July 28-Aug. 3, Barack Obama was a featured candidate in 81% of all campaign stories and John McCain was a featured candidate in a comparable 78% of all campaign reporting, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s Campaign Coverage Index.

While John McCain may have closed the gap in campaign news coverage, equaling the attention garnered by his opponent, Barack Obama remains the far more visible candidate in the eyes of the public. When asked which presidential candidate they have heard the most about in the news over the last week or so, 76% of the public names Barack Obama while just one-in-ten (11%) recalls John McCain. As many Republicans (76%) as Democrats (80%) cite Obama as the candidate they have heard most about in the news recently.

That tracks with what I mentioned the other day: at this moment the campaign is a referendum on whether Obama is an acceptable candidate rather than a referendum on the epic Republican failure. The Obama campaign has obviously felt it was necessary to reintroduce the candidate to the public for the last month or so and reassure them that he isn’t a scary, young radical, while McCain has used the same political window to slam him as a lightweight egomaniacal “star.” So it’s been all Obama all the time. And now half the people say they are sick of hearing about him.

This may even be one of the desired results of the “celebrity” campaign — an attempt to turn him into a Hootie and the Blowfish, “one hit wonder” phenomenon in people’s minds, making it cool to loathe him as last year’s embarrassing fad. (I don’t think it’s actually that bad, but you could see how it might be one effect of overexposure.)

Judging from the new pugnacity of the Obama campaign of the last few days,however, it would appear that they agree that it’s time to give the people what they say they want: lots and lots more information about John McCain. Let’s see how he likes being in the spotlight for a while.

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