As I see it, the accusation that the media is turning an election into a horse race essentially implies one of two things:
The polls are *indeed *tightening, and the media is just reporting it like it is - in which case criticizing the media is shooting the messenger, or
The polls are *not *tightening, but the media is deliberately mis-reporting or fabricating data to make it appear that the election is indeed tightening.
Is it merely coincidence that whenever one candidate pulls away with a lead in the polls, the lead eventually dissipates somewhat and the election become a horse race again, or is the media really willfully presenting data to make it appear as such?
The common wisdom is that if it’s a blowout, people will stop paying attention to election news (why refresh 20 times an hour if the outcome is a foregone conclusion?). If people stop paying attention to the news, the news organizations gets less money from ad revenue. So it’s in the interest of the news organizations to make the election seem like a nailbiter, so people pay more attention and therefore cause ad rates to go up.
I generally think the news tends to manufacture the race more than the race actually tightening, although they usually use some cover like “reporting sides equally” (even when one side is way off base) or “giving equal time” (when really they are making one side seem like they have a chance).
This isn’t specific to this election, I’m sure it’s been happening for a century if not more.
The media can argue that its role is to report “news” - in other words, new information. So if one candidate has held a lead and a new poll shows she’s maintaining that lead, then it’s not newsworthy. However when one candidate has held a lead but a new poll shows the other candidate is catching up, it’s new information and therefore newsworthy.
When people complain about the “horse race” they generally mean one of the following:
The media doesn’t focus on issues or policy, instead focusing on polls, who has momentum, how what the candidate said or did will affect their numbers, and so on.
The media is interested in maintaining a close race. This can be done by propping up the lagging candidate and/or railing against the leader. This is how Hillary Clinton gets more negative press than Trump. There’s a lot of false equivalencies and neutrality fallacies involved. I think of it as similar to the rubber band AI effect in certain racing or sports video games.
I think too often they’ll cite an outlier poll and breathlessly exclaim how the race is a “dead heat”. Forget about wonkish policy discussions, Trump puts eyeballs in front of screens so cover every speech as if given by Churchill and don’t cover the various ethical problems that he faces. It’s all in the name of ratings. If they said “Qualified candidate with solid lead over orange buffoon” the channel gets changed.
The term dates from years ago and originally referred to covering the election as a simple sporting event with a winner, a loser, and a partial score as it progresses. Not reporting it as a matter of contending policies. And definitely not viewing their mission as explicating the policies and their likely consequences both good and bad.
That usage has morphed since the early days into more cynical beliefs that the media are actively tweaking the coverage to ensure a close race. There’s a lot of Brownian motion in any polling. By (even slightly) amplifying the news of the leader dropping or the underdog gaining, they amplify the volatility without having much impact on the overall trend line. Volatility sells papers because its “news” in the sense of new.