Americans are exhausted from political news, according to TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll

NEW YORK — As a Democrat who immersed himself in the political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has a lot in common with many Americans since the election. It stopped.

“People are mentally exhausted,” said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. “Everybody knows what’s coming and we’re just taking some time off.”

Television ratings – and now a new survey – clearly illustrate the phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit their media consumption of politics and government because of media overload, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

Smaller percentages of Americans limit their news intake about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the survey found. Politics stands out.

Election news on CNN and MSNBC was taking up too much of Sam Gude’s time before the election, said the 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Nebraska. “The last thing I want to watch now is the interregnum,” said Gude, a Democrat and no fan of the president-elect. Donald Trump.

The poll shows that more Democrats than Republicans are turning away from the news

The poll, conducted in early December, found that about 7 in 10 Democrats say they are withdrawing from political news. The percentage is not as high for Republicans, who have reason to celebrate Trump’s victory. Still, about 6 in 10 Republicans say they’ve felt the need to take time off, and the share of independents is similar.

The differences are much larger for television networks that have been consumed by political news.

After election night through Dec. 13, MSNBC’s prime-time audience averaged 620,000, down 54 percent from the pre-election audience this year, the Nielsen company said. For the same time comparison, CNN’s average of 405,000 viewers was down 45%.

At Fox News Channel, a favorite news network for Trump fans, the post-election average of 2.68 million viewers was up 13 percent, Nielsen said. Since the election, 72 percent of those watching one of the three cable networks in the evening watched Fox News, compared to 53 percent before Election Day.

A post-election slump in fans of the losing candidate is not a new trend for networks that have become strongly identified with partisan audiences. MSNBC had similar problems after Trump was elected in 2016. So did Fox in 2020, though that was complicated by anger: many of its viewers were then outraged by the network’s crucial election-night call in Arizona for the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Bidenand looked for alternatives.

MSNBC had his own anger issues after several “Morning Joe” viewers became upset that the hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited Trump shortly after his victory last month. However, while the show’s ratings are down 35% since Election Day, that’s a smaller drop than the network’s primetime ratings.

CNN points out that while it suffered in television ratings, its streaming and digital ratings were consistent.

Will political interest return when Trump takes office?

MSNBC can rest in history. In previous years, network ratings are back when the depression after an electoral loss lifts. When a new administration takes office, people who oppose it frequently look for a place to rally.

“I will tune in again once the clown show starts,” Aunallah said. “You have no choice. Whether you want to hear it or not, it’s happening. If you care about your country, you have no choice but to pay attention.”

But the journey may not be smooth sailing. MSNBC’s slide is steeper than it was in 2016; and there is a question of whether Trump’s opponents will want to be as engaged as they were during his first term. People are also disconnecting from cable TV at ever-faster rates, though MSNBC thinks it has bucked the audience-eating trend before.

The poll indicates that Americans want less talk about politics from public figures in general. After an election season where celebrity endorsements like Taylor Swift Making headlines, the poll found that Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, big companies and professional athletes speaking out about politics.

However, Gude is among those discovering other ways to get news he wants to pay attention to, including YouTube.

MSNBC is also in the midst of a corporate upheaval that raises questions about potential changes. The parent company Comcast announced last month that the cable network is among some properties that will spin off in a new company, which will give MSNBC the new corporate leadership and cut ties with NBC News.

Tips for networks that want to keep viewers coming back

Some of the Americans who have turned away from the political news lately also got some advice for re-engaging.

Gude said, for example, that MSNBC will always have a deep Trump-hating audience. But if the network wants to grow its audience, “then you have to talk about the issues and you have to stop talking about Trump.”

Kathleen Kendrick, a 36-year-old sales representative from Grand Junction, Colo., who is a registered independent voter, said she hears a lot of people talking loudly about their political views at work. She wants more depth when she watches the news. Much of what she sees is one-sided and superficial, she said.

“You get a story, but only part of a story,” Kendrick said. “It would be nice if you could get both sides and more research.”

Aunallah, too, is looking for more depth and variety. He’s no longer interested in “watching the angry man on the corner yelling at me,” he said.

“It’s kind of their fault that I’m not watching,” he said. “I felt like they spent all this time talking about the election. They’re so focused that when the main event is over, why would people want to keep watching?”

The survey of 1,251 adults was conducted between December 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The margin of sampling error for adults is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.