TITLE: Opinion | A tale of two polls: media consumption and trust are down
https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/a-tale-of-two-polls-media-consumption-and-trust-are-down/
EXCERPT: In 2016, according to Pew, slightly more than half of U.S. adults (51%) said they followed the news all or most of the time.
But when that same question was asked in August 2022, that number dropped to only 38%.
Meanwhile, over that same span, American adults saying they follow the news only now and then rose from 12% to 19%. And those who said they hardly ever follow the news grew from 5% to 9%.
Granted, the results are from a poll taken a little over a year ago, but it does follow the trend of decreasing interest in the news over the past several years. That number today, one would guess, is about the same, if not even smaller.
This analysis was published on the heels of another interesting poll — this one from Gallup — about trust in the media. That poll showed that those who trust the mass media a “great deal” or a “fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate manner was at only 32% — the lowest it has been since 2016. Although, it’s in the same range as Gallup polls from 2021 (36%) and 2022 (34%).
The same poll showed that 29% of U.S. adults have “not very much” trust in the mass media, while those who said they had “none at all” was an all-time record of 39%.
Gallup’s Megan Brenan notes that Gallup first asked this question in 1972. During the 1970s, trust ranged between 68% and 72%. And even as recent as 2003, the majority of those polled still had trust in news coverage. But since 2005, trust in the media has not risen above 47%.
Brenan wrote, “Although partisans remain sharply divided in their views of the media, Democrats’ trust fell significantly this year. Still, a majority of Democrats but few Republicans continue to have confidence in the mass media. Republicans’ low confidence in the media has little room to worsen, but Democrats’ could still deteriorate and bring the overall national confidence reading down further.”
TITLE: Startling New Poll Finds Political Violence Gaining a Mainstream Foothold
https://time.com/6328179/political-violence-jan-6-extremism/
EXCERPT: Two months after Donald Trump egged on his supporters as they violently marched on the U.S. Capitol, the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution decided to start asking Americans about their stomach for political violence. The way they measured this was asking if respondents agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
That first time, in March 2021, pollsters found 15% of Americans agreed.
More than two years and eight surveys later, the pollsters found the support for that statement rising to 23%. It's the first time they found more than 1 in 5 Americans open to condoning political violence.
Put another way: the chaos unleashed on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, is going mainstream. That has seismic consequences for the country in ways that neither party properly appreciates.
A full one-third (33%) of Republicans say that violence may be the answer. That is ahead of the 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats who agree. But across the board, those numbers are trending in a dangerous direction: when first asked in 2021, 28% of Republicans saw the virtues of political violence, 13% of indies concurred, and 7% of Democrats shared that perspective. And among those who have a favorable view of ex-President Donald Trump, who sparked the failed insurrection on Jan. 6 to keep him in power, there is a threefold multiplier for the merits of violence, reaching 41% support among pro-Trump Americans.
This explains a few dynamics unfolding in U.S. politics at the moment. For one, most of the crowded Republican field of White House hopefuls have subscribed to some version of Trump’s Big Lie and profess—with dubious levels of sincerity—that Joe Biden actually was the loser in the 2020 election. Given the widespread support for such rubbish among Republicans, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone but Trump to win the nomination in 2024.
TITLE: Polls have value, even when they are wrong
https://theconversation.com/polls-have-value-even-when-they-are-wrong-213933
EXCERPT: As in 2016 and 2020, the 2024 presidential race will likely be decided by a small number of voters in a limited number of states. With a shift of fewer than 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton would have won the presidency in 2016. In 2020, a shift of fewer than 45,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin would have resulted in an Electoral College tie. A shift of just 80,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada and Donald Trump would have won reelection in 2020.
In narrowly decided races, polls have less predictive power. But at this point in the cycle, the polls do reveal there’s little reason to believe that 2024 will be anything other than a narrowly decided, and heavily disputed, election outcome.
The most likely presidential candidates in 2024, Biden and Trump, have nearly universal name recognition and sharply different images and positions on the issues. And yet, there is a disproportionate number of undecided and dissatisfied voters heading into the 2024 presidential campaign.
Polling cannot determine with certainty what these swing voters will end up deciding in November 2024, but by continually tracking their behaviors and attitudes, pollsters can better understand why one of these candidates will emerge as the winner of the 2024 presidential election and what these voters care about.
In a democracy, political polling has made, and continues to make, an invaluable contribution. Objecting to political contests being reduced to a horse race by a poll is valid. But polls, while limited in scope, can provide a nuanced picture of what a country, state or group thinks about both current events and candidates – and how that is changing.
That is valuable information.