Minnesota House Republicans have been almost twice as aggressive in pushing their message to the media via press release as their Democratic counterparts, according to an analysis by University of Minnesota professor Eric Ostermeier.
Ostermeier, in an analysis posted on the U’s aptly-named Smart Politics blog, found that Republicans John Kline, Michele Bachmann and Erik Paulsen issued an average of 9.6 press releases per month, while the state’s five House Democrats put out an average of 5.2 per month. The sample counted releases posted to lawmakers’ websites from the beginning of the year through February 17.
“While critics continue to charge Republicans on Capitol Hill as simply the ‘Party of No,’ the Minnesota Republican U.S. House delegation is leading the charge with a much more aggressive media strategy, laden with both negative and positive messages, than their DFL counterparts,” Ostermeier wrote.
Of course, it’s worth pointing out that the study only considers one metric of media outreach — not phone calls, limited press releases, leaks or things like that. But press releases are certainly part of the story.
Ostermeier’s post also includes an interesting drill-down analysis of the topics lawmakers focused on, as well as a positive-negative-neutral tone breakdown of the Republican releases, all of which can be read by clicking on this link.
