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Medill is out with a new study showing that people who live in news deserts are less likely to ticket split and that news deserts went harder for Trump than other red areas.

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.

The report found that the highest concentration of counties with limited access to local news were in solidly “red” states, such as Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana and Mississippi.

Their study looks at percentages, which is an issue in really small counties (where a few votes changed can make a big difference.). Also, two of the biggest swings in news deserts were Maverick and Starr County, Texas, which are counties in the Rio Grande Valley, where something is definitely going on with Hispanic voters, but I’m not sure it is the lack of local newspapers.  Anyway, read the piece and see what you think.  Here’s something from near the end of the piece that made me think “news desert” is more of a symptom than a cause:

[…] [Report for America’s Paul] Waldman said, the election results show “that some of the most common victims of the collapse of local news” are the same people who support Trump. They’re victims, he elaborated, because of all the documented consequences of life in a news desert: more political corruption, higher taxes, lower bond ratings, greater social alienation and rising misinformation, as well as the loss of social cohesion when subjects such as high school sports, local obits and community projects aren’t covered.

Another way to put it:  news deserts are places the world has passed by, full of poverty and the corruption that often accompanies it.  They can’t support newspapers in the same way they can’t support a decent fire or police department, decent schools and all the other public infrastructure that non-poor areas support.  These places are fertile ground for Trumpism.

I have a fair amount experience with red rural areas that aren’t news deserts (well, with the way that journalism is going right now, they’re more like news steppes.)  My hometown and the little towns around it have always had weeklies that did a pretty good job covering local politics, sports, obits and projects.  They generally shy away from national politics.  The print daily in the bigger town has shrunk to a few pages every few days and is functionally worthless as a newspaper, and its website is also functionally worthless (crapped up with ads, don’t have enough reporters, everything is paywalled), like pretty much every other newspaper website except for the big national brands (Times, Post, etc.).  Still, from the time when I was a kid to today, most of the people in that area vote straight Republican tickets no matter what news they consume.  It isn’t just the news diet, in other words.

Since we’re talking about the Hispanic vote, UCLA’s Voting Rights Project has done some analysis that doesn’t use exit polls to see how the Hispanic vote swung overall.

If you look at their BlueSky profile, they have a number of graphs for different areas with big Hispanic populations.  I’m sure not going to take any solace in a loss of “only” 5-7 points of support from a constituency that’s a key part of our coalition.  It’s a big problem.

‘News Deserts’ – Um, Maybe?Post + Comments (20)