Obama’s name recognition history
March 11, 2009
The case of Rudolph Guiliani suggests that mass media cannot dictate to the public who to vote for. However, since it is impossible to vote for a candidate one has never heard of, mass media cannot help but determine who the public will not vote for.
Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president in January 2007, yet even by by February 2006 over 40% of the people heard enough about Obama to have an opinion about him.
For comparison, a different Democratic congressmember running for the nomination, Dennis Kucinich, never managed to have more than 35% name recognition, even during the height of the primary season.
(The points marked with ‘k’ show the proportion of people recognizing Kucinich.)
Data: pollingreport.com: Newsweek, NBC and Gallup series.
Pro Bono Statistics 
February 1, 2016 at 8:08 pm
[…] can be instructively compared with candidate Obama’s name recognition history, who was unknown to only 15% in March 2007, and was known to all but 3% by January […]