A leading company in the media intelligence industry has been closely following the 2016 presidential contenders and the company’s founder says Donald Trump is “doing everything right.”
John Derham founded iQ Media in 2010 and currently serves as CEO of the media monitoring company. Since January, he and his team have collected data on the 22 presidential candidates to determine what kind of impact they’re having and how they measure up outside of national polls.
According to data shared with the Washington Examiner, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton have led the field of candidates in media mentions over the past six months. But Derham says one candidate in particular is succeeding based on his delivery.
“Trump is a media darling,” Derham told the Examiner. “He does everything right even though he may not always be right [and] he makes the story interesting.”
With roughly 172,400 combined mentions on ABC, NBC, and CBS, between Jan. 1 and July 31, Trump is the third most popular candidate in the media, according to data from iQ Media. Clinton leads the presidential field with approximately 280,000 mentions during that timeframe and Bush comes in second with a little over 185,000.
However, while Derham says Clinton’s numbers tapered off after her presidential announcement in April, Trump has “dominated everything” in the last six weeks.
“The vast majority of [Clinton’s] coverage happened around the week that she officially put her hat in — there was a much greater singular media spike for her than anyone else,” Derham said. “But if you’re only looking at the last 60 days, Trump leads followed by Clinton, Bush, Paul and Christie.”
While accumulating hundreds of thousands of mentions on evening news programs since declaring his candidacy in mid-June, the New York-based billionaire has piqued Americans’ interest across the country. According to previous reports by the Examiner, Trump was the most-searched candidate in 48 of the 50 states from June 1-July 31 and he and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have engaged more social media users than the other 20 candidates combined.
The real estate magnate will square off with nine other Republican candidates Thursday night in the first of several presidential primary debates. The debate will air live from Cleveland, Ohio at 9 p.m. EST.
