On the excitement scale, reading Idaho’s presidential election news coverage ranks somewhere between watching a Mitt Romney speech and watching paint dry. Newspaper and television coverage was seriously underwhelming and uninteresting. The predictable outcome of the state’s Electoral College allocation led media outlets to cover more contentious local issues. In fact, news articles regarding the POTUS election were quite difficult to find on the Coeur d’Alene Press website. Of the “Top Stories” listed on the Press’s homepage, the generic AP story covering the presidential race came up fourth. Instead, the Press decided that the most important story of the day were the voting technology glitches and the announcement of local races rather than the presidential race.

Eight driving hours and a different time zone away, Boise’s Idaho Statesmen portrays a similar ambivalence to the presidential results. Of the three print editions published by the Statesmen, only two had the election as its main headline, the third focused on the state education reform laws. Interestingly all three editions featured a secondary cover story touting “In Idaho, presidential result means more Obamacare, likely less federal spending.” Thus, when there was some sort of reaction to the presidential election, it was typically negative. The only story within the Idaho press that covered the results in a more positive light was a brief article about included the headline the Democratic gathering at a downtown Boise hotel from the Spokesman Review that included the headline “Idaho Dems celebrate, pool beckons.”

Idaho’s television news was equally unamused with the Obama reelection decision. Although there was limited television coverage originating from Idaho (as Northern Idaho gets the majority of its television from Spokane-based stations), it was staunchly pro-Romney. On Boise’s KTVB, hosts described Romney as “almost a native son” and utilized Idaho’s $600 million in Romney campaign contributions as evidence of the state’s love for him.

Idaho’s news coverage of the 2012 presidential election left much to be desired. Most of the election focus was on local issues including education reform and state government elections. In browsing Idaho news sources, it would seem almost as if there was not a presidential election day whatsoever. I guess the predictability of the results doesn’t warrant much coverage. Nonetheless, had the national election results gone the other way, it would be hard to imagine Idaho not giving more attention to the race. Regardless, I believe that it is important for local media outlets to focus more on local issues because there was plenty of national election coverage elsewhere.

SIDE NOTE: Idaho was most recently relevant in Presidential politics in August when Clint Eastwood officially endorsed Mitt Romney in Sun Valley. You can thank us for the chairs later…