Though the majority of Americans are interested in and get local political news, only a quarter of those individuals are satisfied with the quality of the news they are getting, according to a Pew Research Center study released Wednesday.
The study, which examines how Americans get news about local government and politics, is based on a January survey of 5,146 adults and reveals two gaps, lead researcher Luxuan Wang said. The first is between the rate of Americans’ consumption of local political news and their satisfaction level, and the second is between people’s interest in news about local elections and their ability to access such coverage.
Sixty-eight percent of participants said they “often” or “sometimes” get local news about government and politics, beating topics like the economy, schools and sports. (Only local weather news and local crime news saw higher rates of consumption.) However, government and politics ranked last in terms of satisfaction; just 25% said they were “extremely” or “very” satisfied with the local political news they received.
Friends, family and neighbors serve as the most common source of local political news, researchers found. Seventy percent of respondents said they “often” or “sometimes” get local political news from the people close to them, while 66% cited local news outlets as a source they turn to.
Social media came in third, with 54% of participants saying that they “often” or “sometimes” get their local political news there. That percentage is much higher among younger adults. More than 70% of people under the age of 30 said they turn to social media for their local political news, compared to 36% of people 65 and older.
One possible reason for the low satisfaction rate is that Americans have a hard time finding information about local elections. Researchers found that while 70% of participants said they are at least “somewhat” interested in local elections, only 45% said it was “very” or “somewhat” easy to find the information they need to make voting decisions.
The difficulty in accessing information about local elections comes at a time when many local news outlets are shrinking or closing down completely. More than 130 local newspapers closed or merged in 2023, according to a study by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Roughly 56% of counties in the U.S. have one or fewer local news outlets.
Interest in and access to news about presidential elections is higher, researchers found. More than 80% of participants said they are at least “somewhat” interested in presidential elections, and 59% said it is “very” or “somewhat” easy to find information for those elections.
Though the study did find low levels of satisfaction with local political news, Wang said newsrooms should take note of the high interest among Americans in local elections: “This is a really important topic for them.” That interest spans political beliefs, she added.
“When it comes to local political news, there’s a relatively low level of polarization,” Wang said. “In our study, there’s virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats … concerning how often they get their local political news and how satisfied they are with the quality of the news they get.
“So that means local political news might actually be a common ground for partisans.”
The report is the second installment in a three-part study Pew Research Center is conducting into Americans’ local news habits. The first part found that the majority of Americans believe local news outlets are doing well financially. The third part, which will be released in the coming months, will focus on local crime news.
