Bernie Sanders Is More Popular With Fox News Viewers Than MSNBC

[Vidal]

Bernie Sanders gets nearly double the support from Fox News viewers (22%) than he gets from MSNBC viewers (13%) in a new poll.


Read More: https://www.politicususa.com/2019/05/14/bernie-sanders-is-more-popular-with-fox-news-viewers-than-msnbc.html

[Gothmog]

1. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet

[MrsCoffee]

3. I'm sure I'm going to learn today why this is awesome.

[Kahuna7]

6. LOL!

[George II]

7. He's leading the way for reaching across the aisle, always on the cutting edge.

[Gothmog]

15. This makes me smile

[thesquanderer]

17. He still doesn't so nearly as well with Fox viewers as Biden does. (n/t)

[George II]

18. In case you missed the point, Biden's Fox % is lower than his % for CNN and MSNBC....

....Sanders' Fox % is HIGHER than those for CNN and MSNBC.

[thesquanderer]

22. But Sanders Fox% is still not nearly as high as Biden's. So what does that mean?

Last edited Tue May 14, 2019, 04:18 PM - Edit history (1)

I can't figure out whether you think having this group (Fox viewers who indicated they might vote in the Dem primary) support a candidate is a good thing or a bad thing. It sounds like you find something undesirable about Sanders doing okay with this group, yet Biden has almost twice as much support from this group as Sanders does. Good thing? Bad thing?

Really, Biden's support is about the same from FOX/CNN/MSNBC viewers (42%, 43%, 44%)... I'd say the story is that Warren, Buttigieg, and Harris have very little support from Fox viewers compared to other outlets, and that Sanders seems to be the beneficiary of that. His support is coming at their expense, not Biden's. Biden is still their overwhelming favorite, though.

ETA: It could just be name recognition, i.e. CNN/MSNBC viewers are much more familiar with Warren, Buttigieg, and Harris than Fox viewers are. So Fox Dem primary voters who aren't Biden fans look to the more well-known Sanders, whereas MSNBC non-Biden voters, more familiar with the Dem field, tend to split their preferences among more candidates.

[George II]

24. Right, his number isn't as high as Biden's, but these are %, not raw numbers....

....and overall he's not getting as much support as Biden. Put another way, for viewers of the three outlets, less of those who support Biden watch Fox than the other two (42%, vs. 43% and 44%), whereas of those who support Sanders more watch Fox (22% vs. 16% and 13%) A higher % of those who support Sanders watch Fox than the other two, a lower % of those who support Biden watch Fox.

It's all a math thing.

It's also an indirect indication that a lot of Fox viewers (i.e., conservatives/republicans) are looking to cross over to vote for Sanders in open primaries, maybe because Sanders poses less of a threat to their preferred candidate, trump, than Biden does.

[thesquanderer]

25. re: "whereas of those who support Sanders more watch Fox (22% vs. 16% and 13%)"

That's not right. The poll says 22% of the Fox viewers who expect to vote in the Dem primary support Sanders. That is not at all the same as saying that 22% of the viewers of those three outlets who support Sanders watch Fox (and that only 16% and 13% watch the other two). That's flipping the correlation backwards. It's as if you read that 5% of the people on DU were from Canada, and therefore concluded that 5% of the people in Canada were on DU. I hope you see why you can't flip things that way. It's a math thing.

As for the other points...

Yes, we're talking percents, not raw numbers. But, so...? The percents still tell you that, in raw numbers, almost twice as many Fox viewers who expect to vote in the Dem primary intend to vote for Biden compared to the number who intend to vote for Sanders. Since we don't have raw numbers, we can only make that kind of statement within a given network's viewership (because they are all some percent of the same unknown number). We don't know, in absolute terms, whether in this survey it is the MSNBC or FOX viewers who include a greater number of Biden voters than the other (or greater number of Sanders voters than the other). Maybe that data is available in the poll's supporting docs. But I don't think that info is relevant to the points either of us is trying to make.

As for whether Fox viewers who are voting in Dem primaries are choosing the candidate they would actually prefer over Trump, or choosing who they think Trump could more easily beat, we have no way of knowing, regardless of whether they picked Biden (as the largest group of them did) or Sanders.

[NurseJackie]

2. Imagine that!

[George II]

4. This is not good news for Chris Hayes.

[Me.]

5. Quite

Considering what a big backer Hayes has been

[Hortensis]

28. Lol. Time to spin until even he's dizzy.

Of course he knew in 2015-16 what drew all those hostiles to Sanders who refused to vote for Democrats after the primary. And he knows that, and why, Sanders has been wooing trumpsters now, hoping not just to get them back but for fallaways disillusioned with their loser strongman.

[MineralMan]

8. That's because Fox Viewers want him running against Trump.

They think he'd lose, and they might well be right about that.

[Celerity]

9. +10000

[JaneQPublic]

11. Yep. Remember Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" in 2008...

...when he instructed conservatives to vote for Hillary in the primaries to prevent a win by Obama, whom Rush saw as a harder Dem for GOPers to beatin the general election.

[MineralMan]

12. Limbaugh and Fox News are Morons!

They think alike, too.

[thesquanderer]

16. Look at the poll... more Fox viewers like Biden than Sanders.

What the numbers seem to indicate that a lot more MSNBC viewers like Warren and Buttigieg compared to Fox viewers, and that looks to be eating into MSNBC viewers' support for Sanders.

[cwydro]

21. That's my first thought. nt

[Progressive dog]

10. I never watch Fox News,

but I did hear that they hosted a town hall for Bernie Sanders.
Since Fox is the Trump Republican propaganda network, it's pretty obvious that they aren't trying to make Bernie the next President. Sander's motive to appear on Fox is less clear.

[tishaLA]

13. That's amazing when you consider he practically has a weekly spot

on Chris Hayes' show and he seldom faces even remotely challenging questions there.

[mtnsnake]

14. Why not say something positive about Joe Biden instead of digging up trivial dirt on Sanders?

Joe is currently trouncing everyone in the polls. He doesn't need this kind of "help."

[NYMinute]

19. Looks like Fox viewers are influenced by Russian bots

far more than other viewers.

…. and somewhere, Putin is smiling.

[VOX]

20. Fox-watchers live to "own the libs." That's why they love 45, and they view Bernie as a disruptor.

It sounds simplistic, but it IS Fox, the fomenting epicenter of simple-mindedness.

All they know is, “Bernie gave Hillary a hard time, ha ha ha.” That’s it. That’s where they are, mentally.

[Thekaspervote]

29. You nailed that one!

[KitSileya]

23. Might be because his press secretary refuses to wholeheartedly support dems...

https://mobile.twitter.com/_celia_bedelia_/status/1128289572251668481

Again with the dissing of dems, which the faux noise viewers like, and msnbc viewers don't.

[Tiggeroshii]

26. "But he's too liberal to win flyover country!!"

...

[sarabelle]

27. He was in 2016 also.

[corbettkroehler]

30. Totally Cool With That

I've seen threads here on DU claiming that Sanders can't attract Trump voters.

[Trenzalore]

31. Burn it down mentality nt.