(Headline USA) The heavily disputed outcome of the 2020 election led to surges in traffic for conservative news sites in the weeks and months afterward, only subsiding when President Joe Biden was fully installed in the position.
For Democrats, however, the resurgence of President-elect Donald Trump, who won the popular vote and all swing states in the November race, has had the opposite effect.
Rather than craving more information, many on the Left have tuned out, retreating even farther into their information silos despite recent criticism that media failures in covering Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were to blame for the nation’s current state of disarray.
“People are mentally exhausted,” said Ziad Aunallah, 45, a Democrat from San Diego. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.”
Television ratings—and now a new poll—clearly illustrate the 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 are limiting their intake of news about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll says. Politics stand out.
The poll, conducted in early December, found that about 7 in 10 Democrats say they are stepping back from political news.
“The last thing I want to watch right now is the interregnum,” said Sam Gude, a 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Nebraska, who had a steady diet of pro-Kamala propaganda on CNN and MSNBC before the election.
Still, Gude is among those discovering other ways to get news to which he does want to pay attention, including on YouTube.
After election night through Dec. 13, the prime-time viewership of MSNBC was an average of 620,000, down 54% 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%.
The percentage isn’t 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 some time off too, and the share for independents is similar.
At Fox News Channel, a favorite news network for Trump fans, the post-election average of 2.68 million viewers is up 13%, Nielsen said. Since the election, 72% of the people watching one of those three cable networks in the evening were watching Fox News, compared to 53% prior to election day.
A post-election slump for fans of the losing candidate is not a new trend for networks that have become heavily identified for a partisan audience. MSNBC had similar issues after Trump was elected in 2016.
Same for Fox in 2020, although that was complicated by anger: many of its viewers were outraged then by the network’s crucial election night call of Arizona for the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, and sought alternatives.
MSNBC had its own anger issues after several Morning Joe viewers became upset that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited Trump shortly after his victory last month. Yet while the show’s ratings are down 35% since Election Day, that’s a smaller drop than the network’s prime-time ratings.
CNN points out that while it has been suffering in the television ratings, its streaming and digital ratings have been consistent. However, the network notably was in decline prior to the election, suggesting that consistency may not be an ideal situation financially.
MSNBC can take some solace in history. In previous years, network ratings bounce back when the depression after an election loss lifts. When a new administration takes office, people who oppose it are frequently looking for a gathering place.
“I’ll be tuning back in once the clown show starts,” Aunallah said. “You have no choice. Whether or not you want to hear it, it’s happening.”
But the ride may not be smooth. MSNBC’s slide is steeper than it was in 2016; and there’s some question about whether Trump opponents will want to be as engaged as they were during his first term.
People are also unplugging from cable television in rates that are only getting more rapid, although MSNBC believes it has bucked this trend eating away at audiences before.
The poll indicates that Americans want less talk about politics from public figures in general. After an election season where endorsements from celebrities like Taylor Swift made headlines, the survey found that Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, large companies and professional athletes speaking out about politics.
That suggests another victory for Trump and his supporters, who have long fought off the scourge of woke corporations by successfully boycotting those who virtue-signaled their extreme leftist values.
MSNBC is also in the middle of some corporate upheaval that raises questions about potential changes. Parent company Comcast announced last month that the cable network is among some properties that will spin off into a new company, which will give MSNBC new corporate leadership and cut its ties to NBC News.
Gude said MSNBC will always have a hard-core audience of Trump haters. But if the network wants to expand its audience, “then you have to talk about issues, and you have to stop talking about Trump.”
Steering leftist media away from its Trump Derangement Syndrome and toward a more thoughtful, serious approach to journalism seems to be something that many can agree on across the aisle.
Kathleen Kendrick, a 36-year-old sales rep from Grand Junction, Colorado, who’s a registered independent voter, said she hears plenty of people loudly spouting off about their political opinions on the job. She wants more depth when she watches the news. Much of what she sees is one-sided and shallow, 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, similarly, is looking for more depth and variety. 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 they spent all this time talking about the election. They made it so much of their focus that when the main event ends, why would people want to keep watching?”
The poll of 1,251 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn 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 overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press