What Political News Engagement Tells Us About Donald Trump’s Victory
By Ryan O’Donnell
Donald Trump won the 2024 election over Kamala Harris, and now analysts are searching for answers. There’s no shortage of takes — some probably right, some definitely wrong, and plenty from people just using the results to confirm their own priors.
For us, one factor was difficult to ignore: how closely voters paid attention to political news. We asked respondents how much they follow national politics across TV, radio, newspapers, and the internet, with responses from “a great deal” to “none at all.” After we pooled a month’s worth of respondents before the election, here’s who each group favored:
The pattern is clear: Harris won with voters who pay serious attention to political news, while Trump solidified much of his support from voters who don’t. But why does this matter?
This is one of the factors that helps explain why 2022 looked different from 2024. If 2024 was about economic anxiety and high costs, why didn’t Democrats struggle more in 2022, when voters cited these issues as top concerns as well? Part of the answer lies in who turned out — and what they care about.
More than 40 million people who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterms voted in 2024. That’s not unusual; a lot of people only vote in presidential years. But this group matters. They’re generally less politically engaged and more motivated by material economic factors like the cost of living. One could argue that this benefited Biden in 2020, as voters who were unhappy with Trump’s handling of COVID-19 punished him at the ballot box — and we saw the reverse happen this year with voters punishing the incumbent party because of inflation.
These “low propensity voters” typically only engage every four years, and the limited news they do consume is often filtered through their social circles or personal media bubbles. Our data suggests that what little political content reached them was overwhelmingly pro-Trump or, at the very least, open to his message. Trump’s campaign was tactical about going around traditional media, using alternative channels to reach these voters directly — and it looks to have worked.
In a separate pooled survey from October 11-27, we find that the least engaged voters — those who say “none at all” or “a little” when we ask them how much attention they pay to politics — are spending their time on social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook, not on cable news or The New York Times.
Looking ahead to 2026, the smaller midterm electorate will likely lean back toward Democrats, with more focus on both cultural and economic issues. But if Democrats want to win again in 2028, they’ll need to reach these less engaged voters — not by pushing more political content through the same channels or building more Democratic-coded media infrastructure, but by meeting them where they actually spend their time. Importantly, Democrats need to avoid looking like just another politician spouting talking points trying to secure their vote, only to disappear for the next four years. Closing the engagement gap that likely defined 2024 will mean connecting with these voters outside the usual political bubble.
Ryan O’Donnell (@ryanodonnellpa) is the Deputy Executive Director at Data for Progress.