Winter 1996
Citizens Election Project
By Stan Cloud
Executive Director
Citizens Election Project
Whatever the outcome of the 1996 presidential campaign, the Citizens Election Project, an undertaking of the Pew Center and the University of Maryland’s College of Journalism, has already demonstrated ways of covering politics that may help restore voters to their rightful place in the process. To the extent that the CEP becomes a model for others, it may also help restore some of the public’s flagging confidence in political journalism.
Highlights of current activities:
IOWA
The “Voice of the People Project,” involving the Wisconsin State Journal, the Lee Newspapers, the Waterloo Courier, the Iowa Associated Press, Wisconsin Public Television and Iowa’s National Public Radio stations, has conducted a statewide issues poll among citizens; the results were reported in December. The partners will use those results to framefive issues seminars for voters in January, culminating in a televised town-hallmeeting Feb. 9.
A new Iowa partnership that joins the Des Moines Register, Iowa Public Television, the Iowa Communications Network, and the Iowa Department of Education is conducting a series of video conferences between high school students and the presidential candidates who are seeking the votes of delegates to the state’s nominating caucuses in February.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
New Hampshire’s “Voters’ Voice” project, linking the Nashua Telegraph with New Hampshire public radio and public television, as well as the state’s Associated Press bureau, is sponsoring a series of meetings between citizens and the presidential candidates. Each of these meetings has received extensive coverage in the local press and from AP.
The other CEP partnership in New Hampshire – among the Boston Globe, NPR station WBUR and WABU-TV – has been covering the voters of Derry, N.H., as they work their way through the intense campaigning that leads up to the state’s primary, Feb. 20. The partners have conducted focus groups with Derry voters and a number of candidate forums.
CALIFORNIA
Two highly successful candidate debates leading up to San Francisco’s recent mayoral election were conducted by CEP’s Northern California coalition of the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR’s KQED and KRON-TV, the NBC affiliate. The debates featured videotaped questions from citizens and a live panel of three journalists to ask follow-up questions and pose their own questions. The partners are considering sponsoring a similar debate among Republican presidential candidates prior to California’s March 26 primary.
FLORIDA
The CEP’s largest partnership, “Voices of Florida” – involving most of the state’s major newspaper and commercial television stations and NPR stations – conducted a statewide poll last fall to establish a baseline on issues voters consider important. The partners are now planning a second poll to track how those attitudes have changed. Plans are also under way for a candidate debate prior to Super Tuesday, March 12.
RESEARCH
The CEP has also sponsored a series of 15 focus groups in these four states by The Harwood Group and has launched a regular Poll Watch feature by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which will seek to help political journalists and others make sense out of the usual welter of “horse-race” polls that often tend to confuse the electoral process.