Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day for June 13, 2017
The Number of the Day columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
June 13, 2017: Dubbed “Washington’s Super Bowl,” James Comey's testimony was the subject of 3.6 million tweets on the morning of the hearing. However, that's a fraction of the more than 27 million tweets that were published during the real Super Bowl last year.[1]
The Comey testimony was certainly a big deal in official Washington. One reporter claimed that “it was hard to find anyone who wasn’t tuned into the hearings in some fashion.”[2] However, that may have been a case of someone seeing what he expected to see. The same reporter claimed that during the hearings, "for a few brief hours, America was united once more. Red state, blue state. Rural, citified. Black, white. Deep-breathing in a yoga pose, or slowly sipping an eye-opening Bloody Mary at a corner tavern."
| The numbers show that most Americans didn’t tune in to the Comey hearings. |
But the numbers show that most Americans didn’t tune in. On television, 19.5 million Americans watched the event. That’s less than 10 percent of the nation’s adults and pales in comparison to the 111.3 million viewers who watched the Super Bowl in January.[3] In fact, Donald Trump's inauguration audience of 30.6 million TV viewers was significantly higher than the audience for the Comey hearings.
One reason for the lack of interest outside of Washington may be that few see it as newsworthy when a political figure is accused of lying. It’s been 45 years since a majority of Americans trusted the federal government.
In Politics Has Failed: America Will Not, I reference research showing that just 40 percent of what we see comes in through our eyes. Our brain fills in the rest with what we expect to see. This reality helps explain much of the political disconnect in America today. Many national political reporters expect that most Americans are as obsessed with politics as they are, but that simply isn’t the case.
| Many national political reporters expect that Americans are as obsessed with politics as they are, but that simply isn’t the case. |
It also explains why most conservatives see a profound liberal media bias as an undeniable truth while many liberals dismiss the allegation completely. The vast majority of reporters come from coastal regions won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The Comey hearings drew a much smaller audience than the Watergate hearings that eventually brought down Richard Nixon. Back in the 1970s, of course, there was no other way to watch the hearings. In the 21st century, millions streamed the event online. CNN claimed that nearly 4 million people at least started to stream the hearing, but it never had more than one million viewers at any given time. Bloomberg averaged 129,000 viewers.[4]
In fact, the social media numbers tell us more about the future of television than they do about interest in the Comey hearings. “On TV, the majority of 19.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen, were age 55+, but on Twitter, the majority (88 percent) of logged-in live viewers under the age of 35.”[1]
- June 12, 2017 100 percent of Democratic Statewide Officials and State Legislators in Virginia Have Endorsed Ralph Northam for Governor
- June 9, 2017 191 congressional Democrats who voted for Obamacare are no longer in office
- June 8, 2017 228 years ago today James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights
- June 7, 2017 23 Pivot Counties in Wisconsin that voted twice for Obama then voted for Trump
- June 6, 2017 156,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day
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See also
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Axios, "Comey hearing draws massive online crowds," June 10, 2017
- ↑ Los Angeles Times, "Stoli, FBI sandwiches and Twitter: Comey testimony on Trump and Russia turns America into one big watch party," June 8, 2017
- ↑ Nielsen, "Super Bowl LI Draws 111.3 million TV viewers, 190.8 million social media interactions," February 6, 2017
- ↑ Los Angeles Times, "19.5 million TV viewers watch James Comey testify in 'Washington's Super Bowl,'" June 9, 2017
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