Without Fox News, Republicans Would Be In a World of Hurt

Membership Ticker

Monika Bauerlein, CEO

Dear reader,

Like you, we’ve been trying to process the head-spinning, norm-shattering impeachment developments. It’s going to take all we’ve got to stay grounded and focus on accountability, so I hope you'll read how we’re thinking about it—and that you'll support our journalism during the special Moment for Mother Jones campaign, when your donation will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $500,000 total.

Mother Jones breaks down the head-spinning, norm-shattering impeachment news. Join us in the fight for accountability with a donation when your gift will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $500,000 total.

A couple of years ago I wrote about an NBER study showing that Fox News induces people to vote Republican. Not too surprising. But now this study is finally being published, so it’s getting renewed attention. Are there any differences between the old and new versions? Well, there’s this:

Old paper: Were a viewer initially at the ideology of the median Democratic voter in 2008 to watch an hour of Fox per week, her likelihood of voting Republican would increase by just over 15 percentage points.

New paper: Were a viewer initially at the ideology of the median Democratic voter in 2008 to watch an additional 3 minutes of Fox News per week, her likelihood of voting Republican would increase by 1.03 percentage points.

Hours have turned into minutes. That’s about it. The basic results stay the same, as illustrated here in colorful chart form:

In 2008, John McCain won 45.7 percent of the popular vote. This paper is therefore suggesting that if Fox News didn’t exist, he would have won only 39.4 percent of the vote. That would have been quite the epic shellacking for a two-person race, right up there with Barry Goldwater and Alf Landon.

This seems a little excessive. For one thing, if the numbers were really that high it implies that Democrats would have occupied the White House continuously since 1992 if only Fox News had never existed. I’m not sure anyone buys that.

Still, even if the effect isn’t this big, other studies have confirmed that Fox News has a clear effect on voting while liberal outlets like MSNBC don’t. This means we can thank Fox News for both the Iraq War and Donald Trump. We can also thank them for their decades-long effort to weaponize the aggrieved white vote. Thanks, Fox News!

POSTSCRIPT: Why the focus on presidential races? There’s a lot more data available for House races, and it’s more geographically concentrated too. Somebody should do this kind of research to see how much effect Fox has on House and Senate races.