Twenty-one percent of the public say they followed politics and the 2012 race more closely than other stories this past week, according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
The 2012 presidential race’s latest number has to do with voter interest in news coverage of the GOP’s presidential primary, with Democrats paying about just as much attention to candidates as they did during June 2007. Over the past five weeks, 22 percent of Democrats say they’ve followed election politics more closely than other stories, hardly a change compared with 23 percent four years ago; and 18 percent of independents are watching election coverage closely, as compared with 15 percent four years ago. Republicans are watching the race closer than anyone, it appears, with 25 percent saying they’ve been tracking news about the candidates very closely each week, up seven points from the same period four years ago.
