Americans are exhausted by political news. TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll show they’re tuning out
NEW YORK– As a Democrat who immersed himself in political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has had a lot in common with many Americans since the election. He’s disabled.
“People are mentally exhausted,” said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. “Everyone knows what’s coming and we’re just taking some time off.”
Television ratings – and now a new poll – clearly illustrate this phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Smaller percentages of Americans limit their intake of news about foreign conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll found. Politics stands out.
Election news on CNN and MSNBC took 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 look at right now is the interregnum,” said Gude, a Democrat and no fan of the president-elect. Donald Trump.
The poll, conducted in early December, found that about seven in 10 Democrats say they distance themselves from political news. The percentage is not that 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 some time off too, and the share for independents is similar.
The differences are much greater for the TV networks that consume political news.
After election night through Dec. 13, MSNBC’s primetime viewership averaged 620,000, a 54% decline from its pre-election audience this year, the Nielsen company said. The same comparison shows that CNN’s average of 405,000 viewers fell by 45%.
Fox News Channel, a favorite news network for Trump fans, saw an average of 2.68 million viewers increase 13% after the election, according to Nielsen. Since the election, 72% of people who watched one of those three cable networks in the evenings watched Fox News, compared to 53% before Election Day.
A post-election slump for fans of the losing candidate is not a new trend for networks that are heavily identified with partisan audiences. MSNBC had similar problems after Trump was elected in 2016. The same goes for Fox in 2020, though complicated by anger: many of its viewers were then outraged by the network’s crucial election night call in Arizona for the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Bidenand looked for alternatives.
MSNBC had his own anger issues after several “Morning Joe” viewers became upset with the hosts Joe Scarborough And Mika Brzezinski visited Trump shortly after his victory last month. But while the show’s ratings are down 35% since Election Day, that’s a smaller decline than the network’s primetime ratings.
CNN points out that while it has suffered in ratings, its streaming and digital ratings have remained consistent.
MSNBC can take some solace in history. In previous years network viewing figures are returning when the depression disappears after an election loss. When a new government takes office, opponents often look for a meeting place.
“I’ll come back to watch as soon as 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 ride may not be smooth. MSNBC’s decline is steeper than 2016; and there are questions about whether Trump’s opponents will want to be as involved as they were during his first term. People are also dropping off cable TV at rates that are only getting faster, although MSNBC thinks it has bucked this trend before and eaten away the audience.
The poll shows that Americans are less willing to talk about politics from public figures in general. After an election season where celebrity endorsements are fun Taylor Swift The survey found that Americans are more likely to disapprove rather than approve of celebrities, major corporations and professional athletes who speak out about politics.
Still, Gude is among those who are discovering other ways to get news he wants to pay attention to, including on YouTube.
MSNBC is also in the midst of a corporate shakeup that is raising questions about possible changes. Parent company Comcast announced last month that the cable network is one of the properties that will turn off in a new company, which MSNBC will give new business leadership and cut ties with NBC News.
Some Americans who have turned away from political news lately also had advice to help them get engaged again.
For example, Gude said MSNBC will always have a hardcore audience of Trump haters. But if the network wants to grow its audience, “then you have to talk about issues, and you have to stop talking about Trump.”
Kathleen Kendrick, a 36-year-old representative from Grand Junction, Colorado, who is a registered independent voter, said she hears a lot of people talking loudly about their political opinions about their 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 is also looking for more depth and variation. He’s not interested in watching the angry man on the corner yelling at me anymore, he said.
“It’s kind of their own fault that I’m not watching,” he said. “I felt like they were talking about the election all this time. They put so much effort into it that when the main event ends, why would people want to keep watching?
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The poll of 1,251 adults was conducted December 5-9, 2024, using a sample from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults totals plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him up http://x.com/dbauder And https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.