Introducing: The Penta Swing State Snapshot

Welcome to the Penta Swing State Snapshot, your source for unique and exclusive data and analysis on the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Our weekly insights provide a data-driven snapshot of media visibility and sentiment in battleground states for the two major party presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. 

The backdrop: June 27 debate sets off a national political whirlwind

The 2024 presidential election landscape encountered a dizzying array of events this summer, starting on June 27 with President Biden’s consequential debate performance against former President Donald Trump on a studio stage in Atlanta. By July 21, President Biden had dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ nominee.

Biden’s departure set off a lightning-fast effort to consolidate party support behind Harris while adding Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the Democratic ticket, reshaping the dynamics of the election contest against former President Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.

Did this national political whirlwind have a meaningful impact on media coverage of the race in the seven “swing states” expected to determine the outcome of the Electoral College? Let’s take a look at the Swing State Snapshots' data.

Swing State Snapshot: Analysis powered by Penta 

The Swing State Snapshot uses Penta’s real-time global media database to track candidate visibility and sentiment of mentions in the largest newspapers and local broadcast television stations in the top three markets in the top seven “swing states”, based on their narrow margins of victory during the 2020 presidential election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Snapshot: After Biden’s July departure, Harris and Trump coverage in swing states tracks evenly

Our first snapshot captures the time period between President Biden’s July 21 announcement that he was departing the race through August 2. The data indicates that Harris and Trump generated almost identical media coverage visibility across swing state media markets. 

Snapshot: Over the last 30 days, Harris swing state media coverage spiked 

Our next snapshot takes a look at the past 30 days of the contest, measuring Harris’ and Trump’s swing state media coverage between August 3 and Labor Day weekend—viewed as the traditional starting point for the final stretch of the election season. Some key data points from the snapshot:

• Harris realized a sizable advantage in swing state media coverage during the first week of August, when she officially secured the Democratic nomination and announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
• Harris’ swing state media coverage peaked during the Democratic National Convention, held between August 19 and August 22.
• Since the DNC convention, Trump has moved ahead in the amount of swing state coverage generated, tracking highest just after his visit to Arlington National Cemetery.

Snapshot: Over the last 30 days, Harris has steadily outpaced Trump with more favorable coverage in swing states

Not all swing state media coverage is equal, though. 

Over the most recent 30-day period, Penta tracked the sentiment of swing state media coverage. Sentiment classifies coverage according to positive, neutral or negative indicators. Our tracking snapshot indicates that, with the exception of two brief news cycles, Harris has maintained a steady favorable media coverage advantage over Trump.

More to come: Let the data tell the story

Through Election Day and beyond, Penta will continue to publish updates to the Swing State Snapshots, along with our analysis of what the data reveals about the current state of the 2024 election cycle. Check out our Penta digital and social platforms for additional content–ranging from dataviz, podcasts, video content and more.

Analysis Powered by Penta 

Using Penta's real-time global media database, the Swing State Snapshot tracks candidate visibility and sentiment of mentions in the top three markets in each state. Visibility is Penta's metric for measuring how companies, people, and issues appear in content. The measure incorporates the volume of mentions, the reach and influence of the source, the prominence of the mention in the content, and how relevant the content is to the entity mentioned. Penta has developed a custom Sentiment scoring engine that calculates sentiment of every mention of each candidate on a scale of -100 to +100, trained on billions of records and tuned every day by our analysts.