Lip-Reading, Draft-Dodging, and Perot-Noia

We conducted a content analysis of 505 editorial cartoons drawn from a national sample of newspapers during the 1992 presidential campaign. Our analyses demonstrate that cartoons are less interested in policy and more concerned with candidate personalities and the nature of the campaign. In addition, negativity is the hallmark of editorial cartoon reporting. We find that there was no measurable advantage given to the incumbent in 1992. Furthermore, we did not find evidence that the partisan leanings of a newspaper significantly affected the nature of candidate evaluations in the paper's editorial cartoons. Finally, evaluations about the candidates' personal qualities are shown to be a central component in editorial cartoons.