CNN’s Post-Election Coverage

During Election Day, CNN is undoubtedly one of the most popular media outlets that Americans tune into for live poll results and numbers. Their team of reporters include notable names such as Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Candy Crowley and Erin Burnett. Many other reporters were stationed across the nation at key battleground states including (but not limited to) Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, and Wisconsin.

Looking through the pages of the website, CNN’s extensive election coverage was no less than impressive. CNN featured an “Election Center” page under their Politics category on the website. The Election Center is divided up into subcategories such as “Candidates & Issues,” “Race & Results,” “Polling Center,” “Debates,” and “Primaries & Caucuses“.

The “Candidates & Issues” page offers a concise summary of the presidential candidates’  backgrounds and facts such as their age, birth dates, hometowns, and respective vice presidential candidates. It also included examples of tweets from their Twitter accounts.

A quick glance at the candidates’ backgrounds.

The page goes on to list latest stories involving the candidates and more interestingly, a breakdown of each candidates’ campaign finances:

A gallery of memorable quotes from the candidates:

Their views on current, prominent issues:

And a quick glance at social media accounts as well as a breakdown of money spent on advertisement in swing states:

The page even offers “His Story,” a nice overview of the candidates’ personal lives and accomplishments. Though CNN tries to stay relatively unbiased in politics, it’s amusing that CNN highlights the fact that Romney has been swimming in money all his life (or maybe it’s hard to not mention it):

The “Candidates & Issues” page also allows you to check out the Vice Presidential candidates:

And it allows you to scroll through national issues to read about the candidates’ stances on each issue:

The “Race and Results” page allows the reader to see results from the elections for U.S. President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, and the ballot measure for either the entire nation or an indivdual state. Exit poll breakdowns and info-graphics and maps are provided as visuals for whichever combination you choose from the drop-down menu (e.g. U.S. Senate poll results for Oregon).

The “Polling Center” page offers what seems to be an unlimited number of info-graphics based on what you include in your filters–issue (e.g. abortion, deficit, debates, economy, debt ceiling, education, energy), candidates (including third party candidates), battleground states (e.g. Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania),  poll type (e.g. race, congressional ballot, presidential approval, mood of the nation), and poll source (Politico/George Washington University, CBS News, American Research Group, AP/GfK).

There are numerous ways to show the data you wish to view (including by list or date view):

The “Debates” page offers a debate schedule for the first, second, and third Presidential debates and the Vice Presidential debate and even allows you to re-watch them on the site.

During election day, CNN ran a live blog from an “award-winning Political Ticker team” which served primarily as an aggregation of interesting tweets, breaking news, videos, updates, pictures, and quotes about the election. Entertaining aspects of the live blog included polls and fact checks.

A retweet from Donald Trump and a photo and tweet from CNN reporters.

CNN.com included a lot of interactive media and tools for their readers. One of the more fun ones was their electoral map. Readers could make predictions on the CNN Electoral Map and even use the drop-down menu on the right to see what the map would look like with the 2008 or 2004 results scenario (“If Election Night this year is a repeat of 2008, Obama would win 359 electoral votes and Romney would win 179. Even though Obama will have won the same number of states, he’ll win six fewer electoral votes because of reapportionment.”).

The map can even be altered to show all the states in blue or all in red (eek), or to show James Carville’s (a Democratic strategist and political contributor for CNN) or Alex Castellano’s (a Republican consultant) predictions. Not surprisingly, each contributor’s predictions show their respective parties as the projected winner.

The Electoral Map with 2008 presidential election results.

Clips posted in the video section include topics that range from the zany, such as one about Eric Hartsburg, the man from Indiana who tattooed Romney’s presidential campaign logo on his face, to more serious issues such as Obama’s “To-Do” list for his second term.

Some of the videos featured on CNN.com.

Overall, CNN does an excellent job covering all aspects of the 2012 elections. The Election Center quickly provides clear information but also easily allows you to go deeper into an issue or research a particular election results if you choose to. Not only does CNN cover all bases for the average reader, but their number crunching and data reviews can easily be used as sources for in-depth analyses articles by politics writers or reporters covering the election.