Spotlighting the Economy: Media Coverage and Mayoral Evaluations

Abstract

This article examines local media's moderating role in the relationship between local economic performance and mayoral approval. Media's moderating role is especially important in subnational contexts, such as cities, where citizens have particularly low levels of political knowledge. In this article, I hypothesize that the economy's influence on mayoral approval is conditional on the economic coverage of the mayor. I tested this hypothesis on two different datasets. First, I matched twenty-five years of mayoral approval and economic data from New York City with New York Times coverage during the same period. Next, I paired mayoral approval data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study with mayoral news coverage from 40 large cities. In both tests, I found evidence that the relationship between local economic performance and public attitudes toward mayors was conditional on whether local media focused on the economy in its mayoral coverage.