There's Already Too Much 2016 Election Coverage

If you thought that the biggest problem with coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign was that there wasn't enough of it three years before the election, then a recent Pew study will have you jumping for joy.

The research center looked at 15 newspapers and found that there has been more coverage of the 2016 election than either the 2012 or 2008 campaigns got at similar points in their respective cycles:

The 2016 election has received more media coverage this year than either the 2012 or 2008 campaigns received during comparable time frames, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of major U.S. newspapers.

A search of the LexisNexis database of 15 of the nation's largest newspapers from Jan. 1-Sept. 27, 2013, identified 335 stories that talked about the 2016 campaign. That is more than double the coverage the 2012 campaign received (132 stories) during the first nine months in 2009.

...In the 2008 presidential race, both parties had contested nomination battles. Yet, there have been 28% more campaign stories in 2013 than there were in 2005 (261 stories). The amount of early campaign coverage this year may be even more noteworthy because the LexisNexis search found far fewer stories overall--20% fewer--in newspaper archives now than in 2005.

Keep in mind -- the Pew study didn't even look at television or Internet coverage, both of which have been chock-full of 2016 stories for ages. If those were added in, it's grim to think what the study would have looked like.

(h/t Politico)