18 months of election news is the terrible. The only thing worse is a celebrity death (Anna Nicole, Michael Jackson, Prince)...those dominate the entire day with everyone speculating about everything and interviewing anyone whoever got an autograph from them.
When Anna Nicole died they did an analysis. The numbers might be off a few percent, but she was 80% of all news covered by cable outlets that day, and Britney Spears did something crazy and was another 10%. The remaining 10% was all other news combined.