News and views

 There has been a lot of speculation about the effect of "new media" on politics, but we don't have much information.  This isn't just because of the difficulty of establishing causation--most surveys don't ask people where they get their news, so we don't even know that much about the association between news source and political views.  A Washington Post/Univ. of Maryland survey from December asked about main sources of news--it gave a list of possibilities and asked people to choose all that applied--and also asked if they thought Trump's election in 2024 was legitimate, if Biden's election in 2020 was legitimate, and if there was "solid evidence that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2024 election."  The voter fraud question is particularly interesting because it doesn't have an obvious connection to partisanship:  Trump talked about the likelihood of fraud before the election but treated the results as accurate after he won, while the Democrats expressed more confidence before but had reason to be unhappy with the results.  

Overall, 79% said Trump's election was legitimate, 63% said Biden's election had been legitimate, and 16% thought that there was solid evidence of fraud in 2024.  I took the percentages who held these views for each news source and constructed two variables--Trump's election was legitimate minus Biden's election was legitimate, and Trump's election was not legitimate plus Biden's election was not plus there was widespread fraud in 2024.*  The first variable can be taken as left/right orientation and the second as cynicism about the political process.  The figure shows the relationship between these two variables:

The blue dots are new media and the red ones are traditional media.**  The audiences of the new media are higher in cynicism, but scattered across the right/left spectrum.  The audiences of the traditional media cover a wide range in both dimensions, but there is a strong pattern--audiences that are farther to the right are also more cynical.  To make it more concrete, among people who said they got news from "The New York Times or another national newspaper" 86% said Trump's victory was legitimate, 90% that Biden's was, and 4% that there was widespread fraud; among those who got news from Fox, 81% said Trump's victory was legitimate, 41% that Biden's was, and 23% that there was widespread fraud.  That is, the Fox audience was more likely to choose the cynical answer on every question, even Trump's victory.  There was no such pattern with the new media.

So this evidence suggests that the main effect of the new media is not to move people to the left or right, but to reduce confidence in the political process.  Of course, some of this is selection, but probably not all of it--people choose sources that are in line with their views, but then those sources reinforce those views.   

 *I standardized the underlying variables first so they would have equal influence.

**Note that I don't say "legacy media."  Use of that term is a pretty reliable sign that someone doesn't know what he/she is talking about.  

Late and unlamented

 There are a number of things I want to write about, but this post involves something I didn't.  In September, I was informed that I was listed as the editor-in-chief of a journal that I had never heard of:  the " EON International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences."  I sent an e-mail to the journal telling them to remove my name, but got no response, so I sent a letter to the mailing address listed.  That letter was returned marked "Return to sender/Attempted--Not known/Unable to forward."  I couldn't think of anything else to do, and more or less forgot about it until I got an e-mail from someone who had a paper accepted by the journal (the acceptance letter was sent under my name) and was told that it would be published online by November 15, but when she went to see she found their website was no longer operating.  She wrote to the publisher's e-mail and got no response, so she was asking me if I knew what was going on.  

The author sent a copy of the acceptance letter.  It had two reviews, one marked "internal reviewer" and one "external reviewer."  I'm not sure that there actually were any reviewers:  both of the reports were generic and didn't mention anything specific about the content of the paper.  There was also an "editor's scorecard," which had 0-10 ratings on qualities including "use of commas, semicolons."  And then the important thing:  payment instructions.  The fee was $200, payable by credit card or by wiring the money to someone in Bangladesh.  There was also this note "The payment is to be sent to Bangladesh as we are currently working on donation of a project related to an Autism NGO situated in Bangladesh.  The journal is solely published from Editorial office of Wilmington, Delaware, USA."

So it seems that everything about this journal was fake, except that presumably they really did take the authors' money.  Unfortunately, there's nothing to prevent them from starting again under a new name.  

Vibe shift?, part 3

 I've written several times about a question on "How much discrimination do you think there is against blacks/black people/African Americans in our society today--a lot, some, only a little, or none at all?"  There was either no trend or a decline between 2000 and 2014, but then a clear shift towards seeing more discrimination starting in 2015.  The last time I wrote about this question was in 2019, and a survey in March 2019 had found a new high in perceived discrimination.  What has happened since then?

Perceptions of discrimination against black people have stayed high.  The two highest values were in May/June 2020, just after the killing of George Floyd.  There were three surveys during the Biden administration--the one in February 2022 found a lower value, but even that was above those found in 2009-14, and the value in February 2024 was back at 2019 levels.*

Combining the evidence from the last three posts, views of Trump are more favorable than they were in the 2016 campaign, but that's not because public opinion has become more conservative.  Of course, I've just looked at two aspects of opinion, but they are important ones, and ones that many observers have claimed were keys to Trump's victory.  I think the change in views of Trump has two major sources:  one is the experience of his first term, when there were no economic or foreign policy disasters, and the other is that Republican elected officials stuck with him, despite some wavering after 1/6/21.  Although he had serious opponents for the nomination,  Trump soon established a big lead in endorsements from  Republican elected officials.  So for the average voter, he's increasingly become a normal representative of the Republican party.   His gains over 2020 were not because voters became more conservative, but because of "retrospective voting"--things weren't going well under the Democrats, so why not give the Republicans a chance?   

*Since I collected the data, I also show perceived discrimination against whites, which has stayed about the same except for a drop in May/June 2020.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Vibe shift?, part 2

 My last post looked at opinions on how Donald Trump was likely to do (or had done) as president.  This one is about general ideological inclinations, as measured by answers to "some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your view?"  This question has been asked by a number of survey organizations:  in 1974 and 1975, and pretty frequently starting in 1983.  I show the logarithm of the odds ratio of "do more to solve" versus "too many things":  that is, higher values represent more liberal views.  

There is a lot of variation between surveys taken at approximately the same time, which I think is because answers are influenced by context.  People like some things that government does and dislike others, so if the question follows questions about health or education, it's likely to get more "do more" responses than if it follows questions about taxes or whether the government wastes a lot of money.  However, there is clearly some longer term variation, so I also show a smoothed estimate. 

The last two times the question was asked were April and September 2024.  In April, opinions were quite liberal--16th highest out of 164 observations.  In September, they were more conservative--95th highest, and the most conservative since 2014.  So you could argue that there really was a vibe shift in 2024.  Given sampling error and unexplained short-term variation, I wouldn't put much confidence in that, but it is consistent with the data.  

Taking a somewhat longer view, here are the means by Presidential administration*:

There is a "thermostatic" pattern in which opinions are more liberal during Republican administrations.  That suggests that the vibes may shift again soon, especially if Trump continues to give Elon Musk free rein.**

*"Nixon" includes one from the Nixon and one from the Ford administrations.  The others have between nine and 48 observations.  

**Although I predict that within six months Trump will fire Musk, invent a dumb nickname for him, and take some sort of punitive action against his businesses.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]