Media Coverage of the Senate Filibuster and Its Effects on Public Opinion

Abstract

How does the media report on Senate procedure, and how does reporting affect the public’s views of process and policy? This paper examines both parts of this question in the context of the Senate filibuster. Using new data on coverage of failed cloture motions over two decades, I show that news accounts typically explained these votes in generalized ways that obscured minority obstruction or equated the vote with simple defeat. These tendencies were more pronounced in television news, and they were more common as the “60-vote Senate” became the norm. I then use a survey experiment to test the opinion effects of differences in filibuster reporting. The results provide some limited evidence that more detailed reporting on cloture leads to lower support for the underlying policy, and they show that respondents who consumed more detailed reporting perceived the Senate’s procedure as less fair. Partisanship conditioned these effects, with minority-party identifiers becoming less supportive of the policy and majority-party identifiers less approving of the process. The findings demonstrate that the press does not consistently provide voters with a clear understanding of the Senate’s supermajoritarian processes, and that this reporting has consequences for voters’ judgments.