The following tables tally up the articles that mention “Barack Obama” or “Hillary Clinton” in their body or title. The results show that both New York Times and Washington Post cover Obama at much lower rates than “US Newspaper and Wires.”
The differences are particularly significant given that most articles follow the “horse race” format, and hence mention both Obama and Clinton.
| WP Clinton* | WP Obama* | NYT Clinton* | NYT Obama* | LN Obama* | LN Clinton* | |
| Apr-07 | 85 | 81 | 98 | 113 | 3479 | 2324 |
| May-07 | 110 | 87 | 110 | 93 | 3309 | 2373 |
| Jun-07 | 122 | 101 | 112 | 78 | 3425 | 2874 |
| Jul-07 | 142 | 104 | 104 | 82 | 3820 | 3276 |
| Aug-07 | 119 | 109 | 103 | 76 | 4070 | 3201 |
| Sep-07 | 152 | 115 | 160 | 94 | 4088 | 3649 |
| Oct-07 | 171 | 108 | 159 | 95 | 4813 | 4742 |
| Nov-07 | 174 | 111 | 164 | 108 | 4391 | 4445 |
| Dec-07 | 195 | 169 | 194 | 164 | 6134 | 4774 |
| Jan-08 | 342 | 354 | 357 | 335 | 15276 | 10540 |
| Feb-08 | 315 | 330 | 409 | 436 | 18857 | 11658 |
| LN Ratio | WP Ratio | NYT Ratio | |
| Apr-07 | 1.50 | 0.95 | 1.15 |
| May-07 | 1.39 | 0.79 | 0.85 |
| Jun-07 | 1.19 | 0.83 | 0.70 |
| Jul-07 | 1.17 | 0.73 | 0.79 |
| Aug-07 | 1.27 | 0.92 | 0.74 |
| Sep-07 | 1.12 | 0.76 | 0.59 |
| Oct-07 | 1.01 | 0.63 | 0.60 |
| Nov-07 | 0.99 | 0.64 | 0.66 |
| Dec-07 | 1.28 | 0.87 | 0.85 |
| Jan-08 | 1.45 | 1.04 | 0.94 |
| Feb-08 | 1.62 | 1.05 | 1.07 |
| Avg. | 1.27 | 0.81 | 0.78 |
*Article count from LexisNexis Power Search with search term “Barack Obama” and “Hillary Clinton” respectively. The source field was constrained to “New York Times”, “Washington Post”, and “US Newspaper and Wires” respectively.