About two-thirds of Americans said they need to reduce their establishment media consumption after the presidential election because of overload, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found on Thursday.
Presidential election news cycles are intense, and some Americans appear to need a break from establishment media narratives that are often biased toward Democrats.
Americans’ trust in the establishment media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” plummeted to a record low in 2024, Gallup polling found in October.
The AP reported its survey findings and noted Democrats’ declining appetite for news following President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping victory:
The poll, conducted in early December, found that about 7 in 10 Democrats say they are stepping back from political news. 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.
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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%.
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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.
“People are mentally exhausted,” Democrat Ziad Aunallah of San Diego told the AP. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.”
“It’s kind of their own fault that I’m not watching,” he added. “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 sampled 1,251 Americans from December 5-9 and has a 3.7 percentage point margin of error.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.