Of course, like all truly-refined political junkies, I’m sure that The Moderate Voice is your one-stop-shopping choice for the best news and opinions. But looking beyond that, a new study out from the Pew Research Center examines where voters are getting their political and campaign news this year as compared to times past. Some of the results will likely come as no surprise to internet-savvy voters, but some of the items may come as a shock. Check out the results in the table below.
Television may have slipped 4%, but it is still the undisputed giant in the field. How TV news reports the campaign continues to shape the views of the vast majority of voters. The second category, though, brings us the largest shift. The internet has vaulted ahead of newspapers as a primary source of election news, registering a 23% jump over the last four years. For better or worse, more and more people (roughly 1/3 of Americans) are relying on the instant access, constantly updated news sites and thousands of blogs such as this one. Talk radio also showed a solid increase of 6%, though that’s likely to be found mostly in conservative circles.
The one number which may come as a real surprise is newspapers. They continue to suffer from a decline in circulation with reports of layoffs and papers going out of business greeting us each week. And yet, the number of people who indicate that they get their campaign information from newspapers actually crept up by one percent. I’m not sure if more people are actually reading the dead tree press or if their answers included reading the web sites of newspapers, but obviously the influence of newspapers has not yet ridden into the sunset.
It will be interesting to see how this study pans out in 2012 or 2016. With the ever-expanding availability of broadband and mobile devices connected to the web at high-speed, that 33% number may well shoot over 50 as the tech-savvy youngsters continue to age and the next, even more internet-based generation rises up and into the voting ranks.