For the first time since April, Sen. Bernie Sanders was not one of the two most-talked-about Democratic presidential candidates on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC last week. Instead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren took the second spot according to data from the TV News Archive that FiveThirtyEight has been tracking using the GDELT Project’s Television API.1 In recent weeks, Warren has seen an uptick in her polling numbers as well, but former Vice President Joe Biden continues to dominate the field in both polling and cable news mentions.
Warren bumped Sanders out of second place last week
How often each Democratic candidate was mentioned each week in news programming on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, counted by the number of 15-second clips that include each person’s full name
| Number of Clips | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Week of May 19 | Week of May 26 | ||
| Joe Biden | 1,160 | 1,610 | ||
| Elizabeth Warren | 258 | 437 | ||
| Bernie Sanders | 465 | 365 | ||
| Kamala Harris | 238 | 316 | ||
| Pete Buttigieg | 310 | 137 | ||
| Cory Booker | 45 | 125 | ||
| Beto O’Rourke | 187 | 112 | ||
| Eric Swalwell | 25 | 59 | ||
| Amy Klobuchar | 46 | 51 | ||
| Kirsten Gillibrand | 74 | 50 | ||
| Bill de Blasio | 83 | 40 | ||
| John Hickenlooper | 9 | 33 | ||
| Seth Moulton | 14 | 32 | ||
| Michael Bennet | 0 | 21 | ||
| Julian Castro | 24 | 15 | ||
| John Delaney | 13 | 13 | ||
| Steve Bullock | 42 | 12 | ||
| Andrew Yang | 13 | 10 | ||
| Jay Inslee | 17 | 10 | ||
| Tim Ryan | 19 | 8 | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard | 11 | 7 | ||
| Marianne Williamson | 0 | 4 | ||
| 3,053 | 3,467 | |||
A majority of Warren’s mentions — 59 percent — came from MSNBC, and Fox News mentioned her more than CNN. According to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of the data, many of these clips also mention fellow front-runners Sanders, Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris, suggesting that she’s often being discussed in terms of her position in the horse race.
Check out the data behind this series and check back each week for an update on which candidates are getting the most cable news mentions.