Since no one clicks the articles, here are some excerpts:
> While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points. In the few won by Harris, her margin was a comparatively slim 18 points, the analysis shows.
> The findings are based on results from 193 of the 206 counties Medill has identified as news deserts, in states where county-level election results are currently available. The third annual State of Local News report, released by Medill’s Local News Initiative in October, documented the continuing decline of local news across the country, as measured by the number of newspapers, circulation, frequency of publication, employment and readership.
> Trump’s dominance of news deserts doesn’t imply a cause and effect. That is, people didn’t necessarily vote for Trump because they lack local news. Instead, a simpler and more obvious correlation may be at work: News deserts are concentrated in counties that tend to be rural and have populations that are less educated and poorer than the national average–exactly the kind of places that went strongly for Trump in 2024 and in 2020. (The nonprofit public-policy organization Rebuild Local News found that 87 percent of news-desert counties went for Trump over Joe Biden four years ago.)
> A related but untested question is whether voters in news deserts are more likely to engage in ballot “roll off” – that is, vote for president but leave local and statewide races blank. Darr, the Syracuse scholar, said roll-off voting explains “much if not all” of the margin in some Senate races this year. In news deserts, said Darr, the assumption is that voters lack information about low-level races and thus decide not to vote in these contests, a potentially harmful trend for democratic participation. “These dynamics seem particularly potent this year, and it could be worth another look,” Darr said.
riderfan3728 on
You wanna know why many people think Trump won in a massive landslide? BLAME FUCKING CALIFORNIA FOR TAKING WEEKS TO COUNT THEIR VOTES!!! They still had millions of votes left to count about a week after the election when people were no longer paying attention to the popular vote results. So by then the narrative had been set in.
Kintpuash-of-Kush on
Yeah, I feel like the obvious point to make here is “correlation ≠ causation” – rural counties with lower incomes went for Trump? What a surprise! Now, if they controlled for population density, income, education, etc. and still found an effect… that would be interesting.
3 Comments
Since no one clicks the articles, here are some excerpts:
> While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points. In the few won by Harris, her margin was a comparatively slim 18 points, the analysis shows.
> The findings are based on results from 193 of the 206 counties Medill has identified as news deserts, in states where county-level election results are currently available. The third annual State of Local News report, released by Medill’s Local News Initiative in October, documented the continuing decline of local news across the country, as measured by the number of newspapers, circulation, frequency of publication, employment and readership.
> Trump’s dominance of news deserts doesn’t imply a cause and effect. That is, people didn’t necessarily vote for Trump because they lack local news. Instead, a simpler and more obvious correlation may be at work: News deserts are concentrated in counties that tend to be rural and have populations that are less educated and poorer than the national average–exactly the kind of places that went strongly for Trump in 2024 and in 2020. (The nonprofit public-policy organization Rebuild Local News found that 87 percent of news-desert counties went for Trump over Joe Biden four years ago.)
> A related but untested question is whether voters in news deserts are more likely to engage in ballot “roll off” – that is, vote for president but leave local and statewide races blank. Darr, the Syracuse scholar, said roll-off voting explains “much if not all” of the margin in some Senate races this year. In news deserts, said Darr, the assumption is that voters lack information about low-level races and thus decide not to vote in these contests, a potentially harmful trend for democratic participation. “These dynamics seem particularly potent this year, and it could be worth another look,” Darr said.
You wanna know why many people think Trump won in a massive landslide? BLAME FUCKING CALIFORNIA FOR TAKING WEEKS TO COUNT THEIR VOTES!!! They still had millions of votes left to count about a week after the election when people were no longer paying attention to the popular vote results. So by then the narrative had been set in.
Yeah, I feel like the obvious point to make here is “correlation ≠ causation” – rural counties with lower incomes went for Trump? What a surprise! Now, if they controlled for population density, income, education, etc. and still found an effect… that would be interesting.