Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may want to reconsider that town hall offer she rejected this week from Fox News.
There is an audience for authentic, left-wing politicians at the infamously right-wing cable network, according to new Morning Consult polling data. In fact, seriously progressive politics are received better by “potential Democratic primary voters” who watch Fox News than those who watch CNN or even MSNBC, according to the group.
For the section titled the “Cable News Primary,” which was conducted between April 25 and May 10 and polled some 33,370 likely Democratic primary voters, the survey’s administrators asked respondents to pick their first choice to run against President Trump in 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden easily came in first place with 42% of the vote, just as he does in all polls. But that is not the most interesting takeaway. The most interesting takeaway comes when participants’ answers are broken down based on media usage. The data show Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., comes in second with 22% of the vote. At CNN, Sanders polled at only 16% with “potential Democratic primary voters.” At MSNBC, he got an even smaller 13%.
It is no small thing that an unapologetic socialist performs better with “potential Democratic primary voters” who watch Fox News than with those who watch CNN and MSNBC. Also — and this could be a lesson for Warren — Sanders’ placement among Fox News viewers was probably helped by the fact that he participated in a town hall event on the network in April to discuss his 2020 campaign.
[Related: Elizabeth Warren attacks Fox News with video, fundraising]
In a separate subcategory of the Morning Consult survey, the poll’s administrators discovered another interesting detail about likely primary voters’ media consumption habits and their opinion of the 2020 candidates. For potential Democratic voters who read the Wall Street Journal, 19% of them chose Sanders as their choice to run against the president. For respondents who read the Washington Post, the Vermont senator clocked in at a slightly smaller 17%. For New York Times readers, Sanders’ support was also 17%.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., also performed better with likely primary voters who read the Wall Street Journal than with those who read the New York Times. At the former, she scored a 10%, while scoring a smaller 9% with latter. The print outlet numbers are certainly interesting, but remember they fall within the survey’s margin of error.
The cable numbers, on the other hand, are the thing to watch.
They suggest that there is a benefit simply to showing up, as Sanders did when he joined Fox News for a town hall event. Remember, the senator’s appearance on the cable news network last month scored the largest audience of any televised town hall event of this election cycle to date, according to Deadline. Who do you think was watching? The Morning Consult numbers also suggest that there is an audience in the right-leaning sphere for a candidate who is authentic and presents himself exactly as who he is, as Sanders does, even if that candidate is all the way on the fringes of the left wing.
Warren should be taking notes.
