Most Americans follow local political news — but few are satisfied with the coverage they get, a Pew report finds

Do most Americans want news about local government and politics? Do they follow news on this topic? And are they satisfied with the local political coverage they have?

Those are three of the key questions a new report from the Pew-Knight Initiative, released last week, sought to answer. (The extreme CliffsNotes is “yes,” “yes,” and, importantly, “no.”) This is the second study in the initiative’s research series focused on Americans’ relationship to local news; the first report, released in May, included the sobering findings that Americans are consuming less local news, and just 15% of them paid for local news in the past year. (Both reports draw from a survey of 5,146 U.S. adults conducted in January.)

Back to that first question: Most Americans do want news about local government — researchers found that about seven in 10 Americans are at least somewhat interested in news about local elections, and eight in 10 are comparably interested in news about local laws and policies.

Researchers also found that most Americans (68%) “often” or “sometimes” get news about local government and politics — about the same number as typically get information about local traffic. That’s below the proportion of Americans following news about weather and crime, but greater than those following coverage about schools, the economy, or local sports.

So there’s interest in, and attention paid to, local political news. But researchers found few respondents are satisfied with the local political news they get, both relatively and absolutely. Just one in four Americans are “extremely” or “very” satisfied with coverage of government and politics — meaning satisfaction in coverage of those topics is dead last in a list of eight bread-and-butter local news beats.

Why is satisfaction so low?

The researchers noted one factor they think plays a role: “Many Americans say it is not easy to find the information they need to make voting decisions in their local elections,” the authors wrote. (The report was co-written by Luxuan Wang, Michael Lipka, Katerina Eva Matsa, Christopher St. Aubin, and Elisa Shearer.)

They found “a large gap between the share of Americans who are at least somewhat interested in news about local elections (70%) and the share who say it is at least somewhat easy to find the information they need to make voting decisions in local elections (45%).” (Of that 45%, just 17% — less than one in five people — said it is “very easy” to find this information.)

The report also notes that, when you break down local political news into two sub-categories, there’s higher interest in coverage of local laws and policies than of elections — 80% of Americans are at least somewhat interested in coverage of local laws and policies, with 42% “extremely” or “very” interested.

It’s worth noting that interest in national politics outstrips interest in local politics (whereas “nearly identical shares of Americans” report following local and national news “very” or “somewhat” closely overall). In total, 81% of U.S. adults said they’re at least somewhat interested in news about presidential elections, and 83% expressed comparable levels of interest in coverage of national laws and policies.

Researchers found no partisan difference in local election interest or ease of news access, but did find that Republicans are slightly more interested than Democrats in news about presidential elections (86% to 81%).

Attached to your community? You’re probably a bigger fan of local political news

While most Americans follow at least some local political news, older Americans are far more likely than younger ones to follow such news (matching the general trend in local news consumption by age.) Among adults 65 and older, 81% get local political news at least sometimes; just 56% of adults ages 18-29 said the same. (Relatedly, a finding with concrete implications for civic engagement: “Younger adults are less likely than those ages 50 and older to say it is easy to be an informed local voter.”)

Meanwhile, across racial and ethnic groups, almost three in 10 Black Americans keep up with news about local government often — the highest proportion of any racial group.

Demographic factors aside aside, the research team zeroed in on one factor that correlates strongly with interest in and satisfaction with news about local laws and local elections: level of community attachment.

Specifically, among Americans who feel “very” attached to their communities, more than nine in 10 are at least somewhat interested in coverage of local laws and politics. That’s compared to less than seven in 10 Americans who are “not very” or “not at all” attached to their communities.

For local elections, similarly, 85% of Americans who feel “very” attached reported at least some interest in local political elections, compared to 53% of those with little sense of connection.

(Researchers found this link between community attachment and interest in local political news is consistent when controlling for voter registration status and frequency of local political news consumption.)

The pattern holds for news satisfaction. Among Americans who are very attached to their communities, 40% are “extremely” or “very” satisfied with local political coverage, while just 16% feel the same who are “not very” or “not at all” attached to their communities.

What’s more, U.S. adults who are more attached to their communities say they have an easier time finding the information they need to vote. Of those who are “very” attached to their communities, 61% reported it is “very” easy to find the information they need to vote, while just 34% of those who are not attached to their communities said the same.

We know that local news outlets, increasingly, think about the role they can play in facilitating community attachment and connection. More of them are taking on and articulating a civic connector role in the communities they cover and serve.

The most common source of local political news: Friends and family

Josh Benton recently wrote for Nieman Lab about the extremely fragmented ways Americans received the seismic (international) breaking news about Joe Biden dropping out of the election.

I personally received that news from simultaneous texts from my family group chat and my boyfriend. It turns out my experience is pretty representative of the most common way to receive local political news, too: 70% of Americans “often” or “sometimes” get news about local government and politics from friends, family, and neighbors, and that pattern holds across age groups.

The runner-up most common source overall is local news itself, with 66% of Americans getting their local political news from local media often or sometimes. But it’s worth noting that that number varies significantly across age groups — older Americans are the most likely to receive local political news from news outlets (with 75% of adults 65 and older getting news this way often or sometimes) while only 53% of adults 18-29 said the same.

On the other hand, those younger adults are far more likely to see local political news on social media; 71% see this news there often or sometimes, compared to 36% of adults 65 and older.

You can read the full report here.