Voting in local and national elections: the role of local and national news consumption and news media preference

Abstract

While previous studies have examined the effect of news consumption on voting, the possible differential relationships between news consumption (local and national), news media preference (traditional and digital), and local and national voting have not been extensively examined. This study explores the role of news media consumption (local/national and traditional/digital) as predictors in voting in local and national elections, using a nationally representative data set from the Pew Research Center collected in 2016. Even though both types of news consumption are positive predictors of voting at both levels, local news consumption is more relevant when predicting local voting, and national news consumption when predicting national voting respectively. Moreover, the results indicate that traditional media are still a significant positive predictor of local voting while digital media are not. Neither traditional nor digital media platforms play a significant role in predicting national voting. The overall effect of news consumption on voting is more complicated and nuanced than hitherto discussed in the literature.