Americans – exhausted by political news – don’t stop, poll shows

NEW YORK – As a Democrat who immersed himself in political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has much 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 urge limiting media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

Smaller percentages of Americans limit their news intake about overseas conflictsits economy climate changesays the survey. Politics stands out.

Election news on CNN and MSNBC was taking up too much of Sam Gude’s time before Nov. 5, said the 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Neb. “The last thing I want to watch now is the interregnum,” Gude said. , a Democrat and no fan of President-elect Donald Trump.

More Democrats than Republicans are turning away from the news

The poll, conducted in early December, found that about seven 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 six 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 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 outraged then by the network’s crucial election-night call in Arizona for the candidate Democrat for the presidency, Joe Biden, and looked for alternatives.

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 are some questions about 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 in which endorsements from stars such as Taylor Swift made headlinesthe poll found that Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, big companies and professional athletes speaking out about politics.

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 poll of 1,251 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9 using a sample drawn from the NORC AmeriSpeak Probability 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.

Bauder and Sanders write for the Associated Press.