Voters for President-elect Donald Trump were less likely to consider themselves up-to-date on political news compared to their Kamala Harris-supporting compatriots, according to findings from Data for Progress.
The progressive think tank and polling firm surveyed 13,404 Americans ahead of last week’s election for its report out Thursday. The results showed that for the month leading up to the 2024 presidential election (Oct. 5-Nov. 3), 48% of the likely voters were in favor of Trump as opposed to 47% for Harris.
However, when those data points were broken down based on the participants’ so-called news attentiveness, the numbers indicated that “support for Harris decreases as news consumption decreases.”
For those who said they read “a great deal” of political news, 52% were leaning Harris and 46% for Trump. On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who self-identified as reading “none at all” were only 32% likely to vote for Harris with Trump at 51%.
Down the middle, “a lot” of news was 50% Harris, 47% Trump; “a moderate amount” was 46% Harris, 49% Trump; and “a little” was 42% Harris, 49% Trump.
A separate survey pool from October also tracked potential voters’ legacy media consumption versus their social media intake. In that study, participants who said their news attentiveness was “a little” or “none at all” tended to get their news from Facebook and YouTube, as opposed to cable news or print publications.
Of course, Trump ultimately won the electoral vote, 312-226, as well as the popular vote on Nov. 5. The Republicans also won control of the House and the Senate.
Many political pundits and others accused expert pollsters of having broken polling strategies after preliminary results indicated Harris was up before the election. Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer, for example, vowed to fix her data collection process after her uncharacteristic miss.
Data for Progress describes itself as “a multidisciplinary group of experts using state-of-the-art techniques in data science to support progressive activists and causes.”
