After one of the most exciting special elections in Massachusetts history, I couldn’t help but contemplate exactly how much the media had to do with the the results. Martha Coakley, the favored Democrat, was simply waiting to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in a layup election when a rogue Republican entered the race with a bang. Who is Scott Brown and when did he enter this race? When the election results came in they shook Mass. and made a big statement in Washington. The results were so surprising, in fact, that the company in charge of setting up the exit polls opted not to because this was supposed to be a landslide in Coakley’s favor. Now this decision was obviously made weeks in advance of the election. Could these results have been predicted by perhaps studying the amount of content produced about each candidate?
