democrats.org vs. gop.com

Looking at the front pages of democrats.org and gop.com it struck me that the Republicans were using much more of their space attacking Kerry than the Democrats were attacking Bush.

I tried to put this impression in numbers and came up with this: 9% of democrats.org’s front page is dedicated to negative content—attacking the Republican Party or Bush—whereas gop.com has nearly 20% of its content focusing on attacks on Kerry and the Democratic Party.

Here’s how I came up with those numbers. First, I calculated the total area, in pixels, of both pages opened to the same width, on the same browser, using the same font size. Then, I subtracted the area of all links, images, flash animations, etc. containing or linking to negative content. The percentage reflects the relation of all negative areas to the total area.

I defined negative content as anything designed solely to attack a candidate’s record or personality. Comparisons of a candidate’s plan to that of his opponent was not considered negative content. Links to pages mixing negative and positive content—content praising one’s achievements or character—were not considered negative. I used the same criteria for both pages.

My silly calculations notwithstanding, it’s hard to visit gop.com and not be surprised by how much of it is dedicated to John Kerry. At the time I took the screenshots above, there were 4 pictures of him on gop.com vs. one, albeit a big one, of George Bush on democrats.org. His name appeared 36 times on gop.com’s front page, vs. 5 times for Bush’s name on democrats.org.

The GOP’s front page is longer and has, on average, 2.5 times more words or characters than the Democratic Party’s front page. But even taking this fact into account, gop.com is still more Kerry-intensive than democrats.org is Bush-intensive.