Gays Elected Obama?

Gay people elected Obama.  How's that for a provocative lede?  You doubt me? Check out these fun stats, based on exit poll data.  Respondents were asked: Are you gay, lesbian or bisexual?

Yes   5%
No  95%

No surprise above in how many gay or non-gay voters were found in the electorate this week.  But check out the numbers below.

                           Yes, Gay    No, Not
Voted Obama           76%          22%
Voted Romney          49%         49%

In other words, among voters who said they weren't gay, it's a tie.  Among voters who said they were, Obama overwhelmed Romney.

Oh my, if Rush Limbaugh sees this, he'll have a fit.  Forget I mentioned it.

And I should point out that it's likely many of these votes were in states that were already solid Obama in the first place.

When it Comes to Politics, Cable News Rules

A new poll is out that defines how America gets its political news (cable) and who they like best (Fox News) and which TV personalities have the most influence (Bill O'Reilly, then Glenn Beck, then Rush Limbaugh).  But not all is good news for the Rushmeister:

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was the third-most-positively ranked, with 36 percent saying he has a positive impact on the discourse, but his negatives far outweighed his positives, with 52 percent saying he has a negative impact. 

"To some extent, Limbaugh has become almost a caricature in a way, so I don’t know how much influence he has beyond entertainment value,” Arteron said. “Whereas, in some way, the other people on Fox are seen as more legitimate news operations.”

Okay, so cable TV rules, but 72 percent of folks say they read newspapers or their web sites for political news, which is higher than broadcast television news.

Knowing Glenn Beck (and others)

Those who occupy the chattering class, the political and media junkies of the world, have no problem generating an opinion about talkmeisters like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and my personal favorite -- Glenn Beck (a Time magazine 100 most influential person, with bio written by Sarah Palin).

But what about real people?  Below, some survey results that focus not on whether have favorable or unfavorable views of talking heads, but rather on the responses that essentially say "I have no clue who this schmuck is."

• Glenn Beck: 47 percent didn't know who he was in April 2010.  Forty-two percent didn't know back in 2009, so is he slipping?  Nah.  Not Beck.
• Rush Limbaugh: Back in 1993, a quarter of Americans didn't know the king of talk radio. Now only about 10 percent haven't heard of him.
• Pat Robertson: Okay, he's kinda a TV talk guy (watch his morning show, The 700 Club) and he's run for president (like everyone on Fox News) and his "never heard of him" numbers are modest, about one-fifth of folks never hearing of the guy.
• Oprah Winfrey: You know this, only 1 percent say they've never heard of her.  Not sure exactly who these people are, but I suspect they spend a lot of time in padded cells.

And that's all I can easily get, though I will point out that another favorite of mine -- Bill O'Reilly -- was back in 2008 both the most and least favorite "journalist" listed by a U.S. sample of Americans who also do not know what a journalist actually is. Sean Hannity was the third most favorite, and sixth least favorite.

Haiti

When it comes to what people know about the disaster in Haiti, you have to hope they're not getting their info from crazies like Rush "Don't Help The Suffering" Limbaugh and Pat "Everyone but me is the Anti-Christ" Robertson.  An article in the LATimes discusses how CNN has nine journalists on the scene while that cutting-edge "talk about news but don't actually report any" Fox News has a single guy.

Limbaugh Knows the Game

I love Rush Limbaugh, and in an interview he explains how he knows his audience, knows how to keep 'em, and best of all knows how to feed the media to keep his name in front of Americans who don't actually listen to his three-hour radio program. Talk radio -- its explosion in the early 1990s fed my research and went a long way toward helping me get tenure. So yeah, I probably owe Limbaugh a beer, or at least a good cigar.

Hijacking da Blog

I'm hijacking my blog today to say, "WTF?"

Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize?  I'm no Obama basher, no wingnut conservative (or loony leftist, more of a radical moderate) but I simply don't get it.  And I'm not alone, according to this AP story.  The Nobel folks seriously water down the importance of the prize when they go over the top politically like this.  There's no Camp David, no closing yet of Gitmo, no -- well -- nothing.  He's had no defining moment.  There is a long list of brave folks who are more deserving.

Honestly, when I first saw it online, thought it was a joke.

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end hijack
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When Talkmeisters Feud

Radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh and MSNBCguy Joe Scarborough had a bit of a spat the last few days.  Details here. What do people know?  That, sometimes, politics is like a schoolyard.  Scarborough had this one right, though, about Limbaugh's joy at Chicago losing the Olympics.

Other Stuff

Sorry, I have no other stuff today.  It's a busy Friday for some reason.  I may add material later.

In Praise of ... Glenn Beck?

I come to praise Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and all the other talkmeiseters out there in TV and radio land.

As much as it pains me to say, mainstream journalists need to pay closer attention to these guys. 

Yeah, they're a bit nutty, a bit fruity, and if I could come up with some other food-based description I'd use it too.  We all know that.  But they, and the minor league talkers, have come up with what eventually came to be major stories.

• Van Jones, the environmental adviser, resigned.  Journalists acted a bit surprised by this, but if they'd been listening to talk radio they would have seen this coming a long time ago and would have covered the story sooner.
• ACORN, that wacky group of whatever the hell they are, got caught doing and saying stupid things. Hannity in particular has been all over these guys.  There's embarrassing video out there and the feds have responded by slowly but clearly cutting ties to the group (Census Bureau, the latest I suppose).
• Czars.  Can we ever have enough czars?  Apparently not the president, and the talkers have been pissing and moaning about this for a while now.  And guess what?  CNN this morning, a story about how many czars there are in the Administration and congressional concerns about who they answer to, how they are vetted.  Listen to the crazy talk people, CNN, and you would have had this story sooner.
  

Some guys debated online the other day whether there should be a hate beat, and someone answered that nearly every beat these days seems to be a hate beat.  Assign someone to listen to the semi-crazed talk radio/tv folks and you'll get a lot of that -- plain hate, dressed up as saving America.  But there's good news stuff in all that bloviating.  Ya just gotta wade through hours of shit to find the gems and help people understand what's going on in the political world.

What People Know ... about organic foods

There was some noise earlier this week about a study that found organic foods to not be any more nutritious than other foods. There's a version of the story here though a bit of searching and you can find the same thing, more or less, all over the net.

The lede? A review of 150 studies found no real health benefits from eating organic-grown food.

In other news, organic food will significantly damage your wallet.

To be fair, they're mostly talking nutrient content here, and that's hardly the reason people buy organic foods. We buy them on occasion in part to support an industry and local farmers, in part to avoid the chemicals that are used in non-organic foods, and in part I guess to make ourselves feel better. I never expected there to be a nutrient difference, though some individual studies do find better antioxidants and other factors in organic foods.

But will this study and its coverage influence what people know about food, and especially organic food? Not really, not so much. We're talking a very specific audience here (part yuppies and yippies, part informed consumers, and in all cases people willing to spend a little -- or a lot -- more for a carrot or hunk of meat). However, it may influence general public opinion about organic foods, which in turn could influence how willing government is to support organic growers through space for local farmer's markets or even in rules and regulations about that organic label. The study gives ammunition to people who are suspicious of anything without a corporate label, or smacks in any way of "liberal" thinking. I haven't checked, but I'd think Rush Limbaugh loves this study. He hates most other science, but he'll like this one.

Sotomayor

What do people know about Obama's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court? A little, enough at least to offer an opinion. About one-in-five were "unsure" in offering an opinion about Sonia Sotomayor, according to one national poll. Only about a quarter of all polled had a negative opinion of her -- hardly good news for the GOPers hoping to challenge her nomination to the high court.

But here's some good news if you're Rush Limbaugh -- yes the Dems like her, yes Republicans don't (big surprise), but among self-described "Independents" a quarter of them had a negative opinion. That's kinda interesting and it leaves a window of opportunity for the Hannities of the world to define her as they see fit.

Painting her as a racist is going to be interesting given the people waving the paint brush (Limbaugh, Gingrich, et. al). Irony, much? You want racism, look at our chief justice's history. But I doubt that'll come up on Fox News.

Anyway, the numbers suggest this may not be the slam dunk the Obama folks hoped for. If I were betting then I'd place serious money on her getting through, but there may be a little blood in the water and the sharks are starting to get a bit frenzied. And don't ya know the cable news talking heads will froth at the mouth.

Of Limbaugh and Hannity and Obama

The Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh-Etc. group have been pounding Obama for a few weeks now. If they're not crying (Beck) they're calling Obama socialist (Hannity) or they're simply suggesting it may be the end of the world (Beck again, cleverly made fun of by Colbert here and then here, watch them in order. Hilarious).

That's fine and good. Let 'em talk, it's all part of the joy of American democracy that anyone with an asshole and an opinion can use both, though hopefully in public only the latter. But you'd think these guys would be having some kind of effect. Nope. Not yet. At least not in mainstream America.

The traditional president favorability ratings show a slight uptick in Obama's numbers. Latest, 69 percent Favorable, up from 68 (but within the margin of error, for the methodologically minded among you). Obama's high is 77 percent, back at inauguration. That's a ceiling effect and the prez rarely climbs back to that point except in dire, extraordinary times like a 9/11.

Given the economy, given two wars, given the nutjob in North Korea and the vehemence of the political right, you'd think these numbers would edge down more. I would've predicted low 60s, maybe even 50s.

Even Obama's "unfavorable" numbers have inched down, opposite of what you might expect given the ideological and partisan pounding he's taking. Post tea party numbers should drive Obama's favorability down, if there's any traction in a largely symbolic and somewhat under performing pr event. Maybe the traction will take a week or two to be seen, so we'll check again. But what people know right now seems to be a generally favorable impression of Obama, even in these ugly economic times. Remarkable.

Summing Up III

I started the week summing up what we know about media and political knowledge. On Monday I did TV news, on Tuesday comedy programs such as The Daily Show.

Today I take on that poor cousin -- radio.

Yeah, radio.

I like radio. A lot. A pile of research I did on talk radio in the 1990s helped win me tenure and thus employment at UGA where I can spend my time in hero support -- meaning I teach a lot, do a lot of research, and watch the occasionally-teaching faculty get all the kudos. Anyway, radio is a favorite of mine, but it's also weird. Why? I'm working now on a study of who stuck to the belief that Barack Obama was Muslim during the 2008 campaign. I'll blog more on this study soon, but one weird effect was radio news. The people who said they listened to a lot of radio news didn't act like others who consumed mainstream news media.

Then it hit me. Talk radio. I bet, though can't prove with the data I'm using, that when asked about radio news people answered the same whether they listened to NPR or Rush Limbaugh. In fact I'm betting they answered more for talk radio than traditional newscasts.

So radio bounces a lot of ways unless you ask very specific questions to make a respondent sure you mean what you mean. The audience for talk radio has changed dramatically over the past thirty years. Once an outpost for the lonely, then for the liberal disaffected, it's now become a bastion of conservative thought. Yeah, thought is a strong word, but follow me on this romp through radioland. Exposure to talk radio is associated with some gain in political knowledge, but mostly for those who already know something about public affairs. The barely interested, they don't get a lot out of it -- which makes talk radio vastly different than traditional TV news (see Monday's post).

What about regular radio news? That audience, especially for NPR, et al., is already high enough in education and knowledge and interest that listening doesn't really translate in much gain in political knowledge. Yes they score higher, but they were probably already high in the first place.

So when we say radio, we mean a lot of different things. TV is kinda like that, though not so much as radio.

Do You Like Rush?

Do you like Rush? Not the band, the guy, as in Rush Limbaugh, master of political talk radio who occasionally gets mentioned by mainstream journalists and politicians.

A Gallup poll asked people what they thought of him. The results? Among all respondents, he had a 25 percent favorable and 45 percent unfavorable rating. He could change his name to George W. Bush with favorability ratings like that.

But .. but .. look among GOPers. Limbaugh gets a nod from 60 percent of Republican Party identifiers. And this is interesting -- 23 percent label him unfavorable. Nearly a quarter of all GOP identifiers don't like the guy. Fascinating.

Eleven percent have never heard of Limbaugh and 16 percent said they're unsure (meaning they also probably never heard of the guy). If you dislike Limbaugh, I suppose you can take something away from the idea that a quarter of Americans haven't heard of him, a quarter like him, and half of America thinks he's bad.

Never underestimate the effect Limbaugh has on the political process. He has somewhere between 17-20 million listeners and they email or phone political leaders, and if you listen carefully to his program you'll hear his points repeated by others later, often on TV talk shows. Limbaugh sets off an echo effect beyond mere talking points, and that's where I believe his preaching to the choir has its greatest influence. What a lot of people know, for good or bad depending on your partisan take, they know from listening to him.

Rushing Obama

Rush Limbaugh is a favorite of mine. He and a host of other talk radio blatherers helped win me tenure as I published several studies on what people know after listening to such programs. With Barack Obama, the talkmeister has a new friend and hobby. An LATimes piece does a nice job of outlining Limbaugh's new reason to live.

Hannity and Limbaugh. -- you can feel the spittle coming out of your radio speaker when they speak of Obama.