When Brian Jarrell, an evangelical pastor in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, comes across an election-themed podcast episode, he immediately skips it. He muted the TV when political ads came on, tried to communicate on his social media feed that he wasn’t interested in politics, and threw campaign emails in the trash. He would sometimes skim the news headlines, but if he knew it was about national politics, he kept scrolling.
Today, just one week before the election, he will launch an investigation into both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to decide who he will support. He doesn’t know where he will land. Although he is conservative on some social issues, he does not like Trump’s personality.
Jarrell represents a group of Americans who largely ignore campaign coverage out of anxiety, fatigue, and discouragement, but who ultimately participate in the election. They are political ostriches pulling their heads out of the sand at the last minute. “In the last 10 years or so, people have started talking about news fatigue,” news industry analyst Ken Doctor told me. “People are tired of being bombarded with news, and it’s grown into a kind of news avoidance.” This trend has further escalated as both online news and Donald Trump have become more widespread. , said the doctor.
Jarrell said he intended to cover the campaign after noticing that his parishioners would come up to him as the election approached and express their sincere fear that either candidate would occupy the White House. I started ignoring it. He encouraged his parishioners to adopt this strategy of withholding news until the final week of the race, and he decided to follow suit.
“Imagining a Biden-Trump election in July, how much energy would America have spent trying to get Biden out?” Jarrell told me. “If you wait until last week, that’s still plenty of time to make an informed decision, but there’s no need to waste emotional energy stressing about something that might never even happen.”
A large percentage of Americans seem to feel the same way. A 2022 Reuters Institute report found that 42% of Americans “actively avoid news sometimes or often,” up from 38% in 2017. The most common reason given for avoiding the news was that it focused too much on politics and the coronavirus. I thought it was biased or that it made them feel unhappy or tired. The Pew Research Center reported in April that 62 percent of Americans are already exhausted from coverage of campaigns and candidates. A poll conducted in May by NORC at the University of Chicago found that 49% of those surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that they are “tired of receiving and processing news about the 2024 presidential election.” It turns out. A lack of interest in politics is a characteristic of what political scientists call a “low-informed” population, but unlike many low-informed people, political ostriches intend to vote. They just don’t feel the need to follow the news because of it.
The reason why ostriches and others avoid political news is simple. It’s divisive. I’m tired of it,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told me, relaying opinions she heard in focus groups.
In Jacksonville, Florida, 31-year-old Tona Barker doesn’t watch debates and scrolls through political news on social media, skipping over articles she feels are “inflammatory and very one-sided.” . She plans to vote for a third-party candidate. “It seems like neither[Trump nor Harris]are going to actually do anything to help us,” she told me.
Barker, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, seemed disappointed by the fact that the Democratic nominee that year was Hillary Clinton. “Whoever is running things behind the scenes just chooses who they want to choose and we have no choice but to go along with it,” she said.
Cheryl Wilson Obermiller, 66, who lives near Kansas City, Missouri, said she replaces watching the news with her husband with activities like going for walks or watching Masterpiece Theater. She is voting for Trump because she finds the news inflammatory, addictive, and sometimes insulting to people like herself. she asks herself. “Are you wasting your time watching politics when you could be helping your neighbor?” And I think that’s something we all have to consider. Am I seeing politics that instill in me an attitude of looking down on and hating people? ”
Obermiller still spends about an hour a day reading and watching the news, down from about four to six hours a few years ago. She hears about her consumption through Facebook groups and Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld. “Because I think he’s funny, even though he often says things that I find funny, I think he’s mean in a way,” she says. Said.
In recent years, it has become easier to ignore political news. Almost half of Americans don’t subscribe to any news sources. Those who want to avoid campaign coverage can choose to spend their time on apolitical TikTok or Instagram Reels, or watch Netflix instead of CNN. “For people who aren’t interested in politics, which is most people, it’s much easier than ever to not watch news programs and not let the algorithms in your social media feed feed you political information,” says political scientist David. Brookman says. The University of California, Berkeley taught me this.
In a recent study, Brookman found that only 15 percent of Americans watch at least eight hours of “partisan” television, such as Fox or MSNBC, each month. “No matter how little you think voters care about politics, you always overestimate how much they care,” Brookman said. This helps explain why Trump and Harris appear on podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “Call Her Daddy.” They’re trying to get around people’s “I hate politics” filters.
If people don’t care, election results may not matter that much. Most people already know who to vote for. The range of truly undecided voters is very small, probably less than 15 percent of the electorate. “The vast majority of voters, for whatever reason, are settled on who they’re voting for. And that’s the way it is, there’s no information available to them that would move them.” Dan says. Judy, a Republican pollster at North Star Opinion Research, told me. “In most political campaigns, there are only a small number of voters who are truly persuasive.” People who deliberately opt out of voting will likely vote for the party they have supported, but they will not be upset in the process. There will be less.
Jarrell, a pastor, feels he has a more relaxed attitude toward the news and has more time to focus on church and family. “I believe that a loving God rules the universe,” he said. “No matter who is in the Oval Office, God is still in heaven, and things will work out.” It’s certainly a hope he shares with Americans of all political persuasions.
