Jay Cost Amends Article On Candidates' Appearances

Last week I linked a Jay Cost piece comparing the public appearances by candidates, and attempting to tease out their electoral strategies based on their travel plans. Though he didn't particularly emphasize it, I did: Fred Thompson had by his count a woefully low number of public appearances, 14, I think, from November to early December.

Shenanigans, cried Qwinn, linking a Tennessean story that stated that Fred Thompson had 18 (or so) public appearances in a two-week window alone.

Cost just emailed to note that he had footnoted that original piece to consider this conflicting information.

The upshot seems to be that different papers are counting different sorts of appearances as "public appearances," and furthermore, in at least two cases it seems the Washington Post seems to have completely missed Thompson's appearances.

He says it doesn't affect his article much, because he was making a point about campaign strategy and where candidates were going. On the other hand, I used that datum to make a point about Fred just not being very aggressive out on the trail. Since the data seems at least incomplete if not totally muddled, I retract all that.

Is Thompson making as many appearances as his rival? I don't know.

posted by Ace at 06:12 PM

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