Coverage of Christine O'Donnell's Republican Senate primary victory last week made her the most covered person among news outlets, according to a report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The PEJ News Media Index found that the news media focus on O'Donnell, one of several Tea Party candidates to win primaries, drove coverage of midterm elections to 30% of the news hole for the week of Sept. 13 to 19. The report of weekly news interest stated:

Last week, the midterms were the top story in all five of the media sectors studied by PEJ and completely dominated the ideological radio and cable talk shows, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the airtime examined. O'Donnell herself generated so much attention that she proved to be the week's leading newsmaker, figuring prominently in almost twice as many stories as President Obama.

In the wake of O'Donnell's victory, the media narrative last week focused on several themes--the strength of the tea party movement, the possibility that Democrats might now hold an endangered Delaware Senate seat and growing fault lines between the GOP establishment and tea party insurgents.