A new Pew Research study on trends in online political news consumption shows that only 40 percent of all adults report getting news or information about the election via the Internet. Forty percent?
Imagine that. Some Americans aren't hunched over a computer screen waiting for the next polling update on Real Clear Politics or cursing their Blackberry browser because it's too slow pulling up THE WEEKLY STANDARD Blog.
But the report also suggests it won't be long before even more Americans get their political news online. Consider this trend.
At this point in the 2004 election cycle, 31% of Americans had used the internet to get political news and information. The jump to 40% who say this now is even more striking because the population of online political users already exceeds the number of Americans who had used the internet for politics in the entire 2004 campaign. Moreover, the proportion of Americans getting political news and information on any given day in the spring of 2008 has more than doubled, compared with a similar period in 2004. In May and June of 2004, about 8% of adults were using the internet on a typical day to stay in touch with political developments. In April and May of this year, 17% of adults are getting political news online on a typical day.
Pew also notes the growth of two other online political modes--10 percent report using social networking sites for election activities and 35 percent watch online videos (such as on YouTube) about politics. Each of these figures has grown phenomenally.
So even if a majority of Americans don't do what you're doing right now, they will be in the next few years--or maybe even months.
