— L. Brent Bozell III, Media Research Center founder and president
A significant new Media Research Center poll finds that large majorities of registered Democrats and Independents who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — exactly those who would be expected to support Vice President Kamala Harris in this year’s contest — are mostly in the dark about many of the controversial and radical positions Harris has taken.
When asked about ten different aspects of Harris’s public record — on issues as varied as her sponsorship of the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, and eliminating private health insurance — between 71% and 86% of these Democrats and Independents said they either had not heard of Harris’s position or were unsure.
When these voters were asked about where they got most of their news about political elections and candidates, by far the top answers were broadcast television (ABC, CBS and NBC) or cable news (such as CNN and MSNBC). This suggests that the knowledge gaps found by our poll reveal a failure of these outlets to report on radical positions once (and perhaps currently) supported by the now-Democratic nominee for President.
In fact, a detailed Media Research Center examination of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage in the three weeks since Harris became the leading Democratic candidate (July 21 to August 10) shows eight of these ten issues received ZERO attention from these newscasts, while two others received only minor coverage.
This poll was conducted for the Media Research Center by McLaughlin & Associates between August 2 and August 5. The survey consisted of 1,200 people — 800 registered Democrats plus 400 Independents who reported voting for Joe Biden in 2020. Each was asked about where they typically received their political news, as well as their familiarity with a list of left-wing positions taken by Harris.
Each voter reported their top two sources for election news. Just over half (50.2%) listed broadcast television as a main source of news, followed by cable news (41.2%), social media (34.4%), online news sites (23.9%), and search engines (16.7%). A smaller number of respondents listed national newspapers (10.8%), public broadcasting (9.2%), local newspapers (7.6%), radio (4.9%) and AI chatbots (1.0%) as a main source of political information.
But when it came to recalling Harris’s radical record, most of these voters said they were in the dark. Details on media coverage and voter awareness of each of the ten issues we probed:
To continue reading this article, please visit: Newsbusters.org/Poll
