As election returns rolled in – albeit more slowly than in recent years – Americans were tuning in closely, with about a third of U.S. adults (36%) following the results of the presidential election “almost constantly.” And although U.S. adults generally gave their own sources positive marks for news coverage of the returns (38% said their own news sources did “very well,” 40% said they did “somewhat well”), Republicans were less likely than Democrats to say their news sources did very well at helping them understand the election results, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
The survey of 11,818 U.S. adults conducted Nov. 12-17, 2020, as part of the Center’s American News Pathways project, also found that cable TV was the most relied-on platform for election night news, with three-in-ten Americans (30%) turning to results this way. The next most-used platforms were news websites and apps (24%) and national network TV (22%), with only 9% of U.S. adults turning most to social media.
• Consistent with earlier data on attention to political and election news, adults with more education were more likely to follow the incoming election results “almost constantly”: 44% of those U.S. adults with postgraduate degrees said this, compared with 37% of those who have a college degree, 36% of those with some college experience and 33% of those with a high school diploma or less.
• Democrats followed presidential election returns more closely than Republicans: 42% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic followed the results “almost constantly,” with 31% of Republicans and Republicans leaners saying the same. Partisans used the various platforms for election news in generally similar shares, but differences emerged when it came to attitudes about how well their own news sources explained the results.
• And attention to election news differed among partisans with different media diets. For example, Republicans who use only Fox News and/or talk radio were more likely to say they followed election results “almost constantly” than Republicans who mostly get news from a mix of sources. (Learn how researchers grouped survey responses based on the political composition of an outlet’s audience.)
• U.S. adults who turned to cable TV most to follow election results were more likely than people turning to other pathways to say they followed the results “almost constantly.” Fully 51% of this group said this, compared with 35% of those who mostly used news websites or apps, 34% of those who mostly used national network TV, and 25% of those who mostly used social media for coverage of the results.
• A solid majority of Democrats (54%) said the sources they used most did “very well” at helping them understand the election results, but the same is true of just 21% of Republicans. Instead, 46% of Republicans say their sources did “somewhat well,” while about a quarter (23%) say their sources did “not too well” or “not at all well” in helping them understand the results. In contrast, just 6% of Democrats offered a negative assessment of their news sources’ performance.
• U.S. adults who mainly turned to social media for election results gave their sources lower ratings for explaining election results. Only 22% of those who used social media most for election results said their sources did “very well” at helping them understand the results, compared with 43% of those who used national network TV most, 43% who used news websites and apps most and 46% of those who used cable TV most.
• Americans who followed the election closely were much more likely to say their news sources did “very well” at helping them understand election results. Of those U.S. adults following the results constantly, 58% say their news sources did very well at this, versus 35% of those who say they checked in on the results fairly often and just 21% of those who say they checked in occasionally.
The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 11,818 respondents is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.
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