US election: Fox News is the country's main news source

The “D-day” of the US election has finally arrived: it is this November 5th that Americans cast their last votes at the polls.

The dispute between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris will have to be decided vote by vote – and how voters obtained information to define that vote can count a lot.

A Pew Research Center survey carried out on the eve of one of the most important elections provides data that could be decisive for the country. Fox News has been named the top source of news about politics and elections for most Americans.

Fox News could decide another US election

In September, the institute surveyed 9,680 US adults to find out which source they turned to most often for news about politics and elections. The spontaneous survey had hundreds of vehicles cited, showing how fragmented the media is in the country.

At the top, however, Fox News appears isolated: the conservative-leaning broadcaster that was fundamental to Trump’s first term was mentioned by 13% of those interviewed (the same number as the survey carried out in 2021).

The oldest are the most loyal: 22% of Americans aged 65 and over say that Fox News is their main source of news, compared to just 5% of adults under 30.

In second place is CNN, with 10% of respondents choosing it as the main vehicle for getting news about politics and elections in the USA. Despite representing 1 in 10 Americans, the number is four percentage points below the previous survey.

A bar chart showing that Americans most often say Fox News and CNN are their main sources of political news. — Credit: Pew Research Center

In addition to the two TV stations, at least 2% of Americans cited eight other sources:

A specific local TV station or in general;
Other national news broadcasters (ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC or CBS News);
NPR, the only radio among the main sources of political news;
New York Times, the only newspaper cited in the research;
The social network X.

The survey also asked which platform is most frequently used to get news about politics and elections in the US. Television is still the most popular medium in the country (35%), followed by websites or applications for information vehicles (21%) and social networks (20%).

The “mainstream media” in the USA

THE Pew Research Center also asked Americans whether they think their main source of information about politics is the “mainstream media”.

The absolute majority of those interviewed recognize the vehicle through which they receive information as part of the mainstream media — this is the case of CNN, mentioned by 84% of Americans who consume news about politics on the channel. 5%, however, say that CNN is not part of traditional media.

Fox News is an outlier. Although the majority of respondents recognized it as part of the mainstream media (61%), the broadcaster has the highest percentage of responses indicating that it is not part of this group (28%).

A horizontal stacked bar chart showing that among adults who say Fox News is their main source of political news, 28% say it is not 'mainstream media'. — Credit: Pew Research Center

Analyzing by party segment, Kamala voters — that is, Democrats or those with Democratic tendencies — are more likely than Trump voters, or supporters of the Republican party, to recognize that their main sources of information are part of the mainstream media (72% against 48%).

And the opposite was also identified in the survey: Republicans (36%) are more likely to say that their news sources are not part of the traditional media than Democrats (13%).