As Trump’s ratings slide, polling data reveals the scale of Fox News’s influence on US politics

Donald Trump’s ratings continue to slide on most issues. Recent Economist/YouGov polling across the US, completed on May 9-12, shows 51% think the country is on the wrong track, while only 45% have a favourable impression of his job as president. On inflation and prices in the shops, only 35% approve of his handling of this policy.

Trump seems to be scoring particularly badly with young voters. Around 62% of young people (18 to 29s) have an unfavourable opinion of the president, compared with 53% of the over-65s.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to pursue an agenda to close down, or shackle, much of the media it considers not on his side.

Funding for national public service radio NPR and television PBS, as well as the global news service Voice of America, is under threat. Some national news outlets are under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for their coverage.

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In a speech in March, Trump said broadcasters CNN and MSNBC, and some newspapers he didn’t name “literally write 97.6% bad about me”. He added: “It has to stop. It has to be illegal.”

The Trump team clearly see the role of the media as important to establishing and retaining support, and have taken steps to shake up White House coverage – including by changing who can attend the White House press pool.

About seven in ten members of the American public say they are following the news for updates on the Trump administration. It is interesting, therefore, to consider the role of the media in influencing Trump’s popularity, and insights can be found in the massive US Cooperative Election Study, conducted during the presidential contest last year.

That survey showed 57% of Americans had watched TV news in the previous 24 hours. Around 81% had used social media during the same period, but only 20% had used it to comment on politics.

There is a lot of attention being paid to fake news on the internet, which is helping to cause polarisation in the US. But when it comes to news about politics, TV coverage is still very important for most Americans.

The survey asked respondents about the TV news channels they watched, and Fox News came out on top with 47% of the viewers. ABC came second with 37%, and CBS and CNN tied on 35%. Fox News is Trump’s favourite TV station, with its rightwing populist agenda and regular output of Trump-friendly news.

Relationship between Trump voters and Fox News’s audience in 2024 US presidential election:

The Cooperative Election Study had 60,000 respondents, which provides reasonably sized samples in each of the 50 states. The Trump vote varied quite a lot across states, with only 34% of voters in Maryland supporting him, compared with 72% in Wyoming. The electoral college formally decides the results of presidential elections, and this is based on states – so, looking at voting in this way can be quite revealing.

The connection between watching Fox News and Trump’s vote share can be seen in the chart above. It varies from 21% who watched the channel in Vermont to 60% in West Virginia.

Vermont is represented in Congress by Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist from a radical political tradition, and only 32% voted for Trump there. In contrast, West Virginia is part of the rust belt of impoverished states hit by deindustrialisation and the decline of the coal mining industry, and 71% voted for Trump there.

We can use a regression model (which looks at the relationship between variables) to predict support for Trump using key measures that drive the vote share for Trump in each state. The model uses three variables to predict the results with 95% accuracy, which means while not perfect, it gives a very accurate prediction of Trump’s vote.

Not surprisingly, partisanship – that is, the percentage of registered Republicans in each state – is one of the key metrics. In addition, ideology – the percentage of respondents who say they are conservatives – is another.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the third important predictor is viewership of Fox News. The relationship between watching the channel and voting for Trump is very strong at the state level. Also, the more time people spend watching the channel, the more likely they are to have voted for Trump.

Impact of key factors on Trump voting in 2024 US election:

This chart calculates the relationship between watching Fox News and other factors and the strength of a state’s support for Trump in 2024. If a variable is a perfect predictor of Trump voting, it would score 1.0 on the scale. If it is a perfect non-predictor, it would score 0.

So, the most important predictor of being a Trump voter was the presence of conservatives in a state, followed by the percentage of registered Republicans, and the third was watching Fox News. A high score on all three meant greater support for Trump.

To illustrate this, 45% of Texans considered themselves conservatives, 33% were registered Republicans, and 51% watched Fox News. Using these measures, the model predicts that 57% would vote for Trump. In fact, 56% voted for him in that state in 2024. So, while the prediction was not perfect, it was very close.

A similar predictive model can be used to forecast former Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s vote shares by state. In her case, we need four variables to predict the results with 95% accuracy – the percentage of registered Democrats, liberals and moderates in a state, and also Fox News viewership.

Not surprisingly in Harris’s case, the relationship between Fox News viewing and voting is strongly negative (correlation = -0.64). When viewership was high, the Harris vote was low.

Years ago, the “fairness doctrine” used to mandate US broadcasters to fairly reflect different viewpoints on controversial issues in their coverage. Candidates for public office were entitled to equal air time.

But this rule was removed by the FCC in 1987, and has led to an era of some broadcasters becoming far more partisan. The FCC decision followed a period of debate and challenges to the fairness doctrine. This led to its abolition under Ronald Reagan, the Republican president who inspired Project 2025 – the document that in turn appears to be inspiring the Trump government’s policy agenda.

When the Trump era is over, incumbent Democrats are going to have to repair US institutions that this administration has damaged. If they want to do something about the polarisation of US politics, they may also need to restore the fairness doctrine.

Had it not been removed in the first place, it is possible that Harris would have won the 2024 presidential election, since Fox News would not exist in its present form. Whatever happens next, the US media is likely to play an important role.

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.