January 2009 "Barack-Hillary Ratio"

In the Barack-Hillary tug of war for the media spotlight, there was an uptick in the quantity of New York Times coverage of President Obama during the month of January -- despite the coverage associated with Clinton's Senate confirmation and the New York statehouse saga in filling her Senate seat.

Click on the graphic at the top of this entry for a better view of the data.

Going forward, the Barack-Hillary Ratio will provide a leading indicator on Obama's hold on his presidency. Obama and Hillary are the two power centers of the Democratic Party. To the degree that Obama is in control, he should be holding onto his lead in New York Times mentions. If Hillary closes the gap, watch out for fireworks in the administration.

Click here for last month's inaugural item on the Barack-Hillary ratio, an exclusively monthly feature on The Rapier.

After enjoying a larger and larger share of the media spotlight in three straight months at the height of the campaign -- September - November 2009 -- Obama saw more attention shift to Clinton, in relative terms, in December 2009.

Last month, the lead shifted back to President Obama.

Click here for a timeline of critical events during the election.

The Rapier will update the Barack-Hillary Ratio monthly and will take a look at the wild card tangled up in all of this media coverage: Bill Clinton himself.

Methodology note:

Using The New York Times online "advanced search" feature, The Rapier tallied the number of mentions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for each month, from January 2006 through January 2009. For Obama, the tally included the number of mentions of "Barack Obama" and "Barack Hussein Obama" but did not count mentions alone of his first or last names. For Clinton, the tally included the number of mentions of "Hillary Clinton" and "Hillary Rodham Clinton" but did not count mentions alone of her first or last names.

The Rapier created the ratio by taking the number of Barack Obama mentions and dividing this number by the tally of Hillary Clinton mentions. The Rapier then took that ratio and subtracted 1. This created a value where negative numbers indicated a greater number of Hillary Clinton mentions. A positive number represents more Barack Obama mentions.

Raw data below. First column is the date searched. First number is the tally of Barack Obama mentions. Last number is the tally of Hillary Clinton mentions.

Jan-06 2, 52
Feb-06 7, 69
Mar-06 9, 84
Apr-06 7, 39
May-06 13, 79
Jun-06 5, 64
Jul-06 6, 52
Aug-06 2, 73
Sep-06 7, 70
Oct-06 23, 111
Nov-06 39, 94
Dec-06 47, 70
Jan-07 89, 118
Feb-07 113, 147
Mar-07 84, 113
Apr-07 112, 105
May-07 92, 112
Jun-07 82, 124
Jul-07 87, 119
Aug-07 76, 120
Sep-07 94, 174
Oct-07 94, 188
Nov-07 110, 206
Dec-07 164, 225
Jan-08 336, 429
Feb-08 450, 497
Mar-08 399, 410
Apr-08 361, 396
May-08 385, 365
Jun-08 408, 218
Jul-08 379, 90
Aug-08 433, 160
Sep-08 475, 115
Oct-08 603, 94
Nov-08 973, 176
Dec-08 658, 157
Jan-09 841, 170