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Rush and Hannity listeners most informed about US politics

By: Soren Dayton (Diary)  |  March 7th, 2009 at 08:48 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The guys at Open Left attack CNBC viewers for not being particularly well informed. I think that they missed the tastiest story about a Pew research poll about news habits.

The tastiest bit is that of all the categories, as measured in the poll, people who get their news from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most informed about US poltics. (at least if you accept Pew’s metric).

Let’s look at the numbers:

Outlet US House Control Name Sec State Name UK PM All Three
New Yorker/The Atlantic 71 71 59 48
NPR 73 72 57 44
Hardball 76 66 53 43
Hannity 84 73 49 42
Rush Limbaugh 83 71 41 36
CNBC 51 45 28 17
TV News Magazines 56 44 28 16
All Resp 53 42 28 18

On the question of naming the House majority party, 84% of Hannity viewers get it right. 83% of Limbaugh viewers get it right.  Hardball (MSNBC) is next at 76%. I can’t tell if that difference is statistically significant.

On the question of naming teh Secretary of State, Hannity’s viewers are again the highest at 73%, while NPR’s are next, and Limbaugh readers tie with readers of the New Yorker and the Atlantic. (presumably combined because the samples are so small) Here, Hardball viewers are down at 66%.

Now, to get an over-all number that doesn’t place Hannity and Rush at the top, there is a question about UK Prime Minister. And, admittedly, they perform worse. However, somewhat ironically, more Hannity viewers can identify the UK Prime Minister than BBC viewers. And Rush listeners are only 3% less.

Now what to make of all this? Rush and Hannity get bragging rights of a sort.

How does that work for the arrogant lefties who think that they are smarter than everyone? Like those guys at OpenLeft. Not so hot? Then maybe they shouldn’t have started the debate…

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  • DONTREADONME

    before gettting to the point that you made after the post of the results of the polls, I thought what is this question about the UK prime minister? It looks as if they tried to find a way to negate the advantage of Rush and Hannity listeners in regards to domestic government knowledge. For all we know the results that were posted by Pew were done to tailor the result for what they wanted the outcome to be; therefore, for all we know they asked questions like who the Russian Prime Minister is? So what really is important here is that Rush and Hannity listeners are more informed about their own Government than that of the world, plus Hannity and Rush listeners probably could have named Tony Blair overwhelmingly about 3 years ago.

  • katesmith

    The survey is dated October 2008 and lists the Hannity and Colmes tv show vs the Rush radio show. I mention this because I was interested in the stats for Hannity’s radio audience which I don’t see in this study. Granted there may be some of the same who listen to both, but it’s an important distinction. Pew can’t really say this is Hannity’s radio audience vs Rush’s. Given this, I’d be willing to bet from my own listening experience that Hannity’s radio audience wouldn’t score as high as his tv audience. It’s a more folksy gathering. (Colmes of course is no longer on Hannity’s tv show, guessing that wouldn’t make a big difference).

    • DONTREADONME
  • spaceman_spiff

    Here is a very similar test also on Pew:

    http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/

    I took this test AND my results where identical. Very curious.

    Also, I do remember Rush talking about this poll.

    • DONTREADONME

      missed the one on US military deaths in Iraq, but can you blame me the media has only talked about the US economy since it was the only thing that would elect 0.

    • itrytobenice

      Yeah. I’m that good. :o

      • DONTREADONME

        :( )

      • The_Gadfly

        alone after my gut check I would have gotten 10 out of 10.

  • noufa

    Supposedly Hannity listeners are paranoid about Nancy Pelosi. How does OpenLeft explain their knowledge about Gordon Brown?

    From 2006-2008, Democrats have whipped up the masses to believe the worst about Republicans. Perhaps left-leaning types WANT to think the Republicans have absolute power. The 2 minute hates must be draining. They’re a little less so when they think the opposition party is omnipotent.

    Won’t happen, but who would win the Senate seat in a MN re-vote? Franken probably wouldn’t win as many votes with his campaign based on sliming Bush.

    There are valid criticisms of the Bush presidency. But at the end of his 2nd term, Republicans had very little interest in defending his legacy. And the general public was tired of him. Remember that for similar reasons, Clinton was kept away from Gore’s campaign in Y2K.

    We become bored & cynical about politics. So we watch Entertainment Tonight rather than stick up for Bush (or Clinton). As we become less partisan, we become less informed. The survey results reflect this fact.

    Not surprising that infotainment queen Katie Couric has dragged down the CBS evening news. They have the worst audience of the broadcast evening news shows. In a hyper-partisan world, CBS couldn’t afford to put that ditz on air.

    Today, Clinton’s name nearly gave his wife the presidency. Just as George H.W. Bush’s legacy rebounded & propelled his son into the Oval Office 8 years ago. We rely more on superficial cues like family names. This is the post-partisan politics. It aint pretty.

    • spaceman_spiff

      ?Supposedly Hannity listeners are paranoid about Nancy Pelosi. ?

      Isn’t not paranoia when it’s true.

      • http://politicsandcriticalthinking.blogspot.com/ Critical_Thinker

        You’re only paranoid if they are out to get you.

  • The_Gadfly

    they listen to Rush and Hannity actually do? I can’t believe that few of them know who is in charge of Congress and who the Secretary of State is.

    • The_Gadfly

      on those surveys. The cross products to get Rush and Hannity below the lib rags looks fishy to me.

  • Strike_Twice

    I am not familiar with D.L. Hughley nor his politics, except that he appears on CNN. Mr. Hughley made a comment earlier today in relation to Michael Steele’s apology to Rush Limbaugh that his beef with Mr. Steele is like “black on black crime. That’s what it is.”

    Can someone please explain to me what Black on Black crime is? Is it less acceptable to Mr. Hughley than “Black on White” crime? More acceptable? Is Mr. Hughley a racist?

  • itrytobenice

    I’d be willing to wager that 99% of regular RS readers could get 100% in a cakewalk. And the other 1% are trolls.

  • phred

    doesn’t know that the Democrats have the house majority.

  • IJB

    …Finds out who’s running the show these days, Nan & Dingy Harry are going to be lined up against the electoral wall, so to speak.

    That’s why the media plays “hide the D” so hard when scandals hit Dem politicians. They’re trying to obscure who’s really in charge.

    But when things get bad enough, people (even empty-headed mushy “independents”) will go out of their way to find out who’s really in charge. And nothing the media will do can stop them.

    There’s going to be an ‘epiphany’ on many peoples’ part over the next year.

    That must be a scary prospect for Obama & co…