By John Ray (@johnlray)

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting Fox News viewers are uniquely conservative compared to the general American electorate. Recent research has indicated that Fox News played a causal role in the rightward lurch of the Republican Party. Here, we present some survey data on voters’ Fox News-watching habits and on their political attitudes. Across a variety of political and cultural attitudes, Republicans who report getting their news from Fox are significantly to the right of Republicans who don’t.

In the run-up to the November, 2018 election we fielded a survey of 3,215 US voters and asked, among other things, where they got their news from.

Specifically, we asked respondents,

In the past week, did you get news from any of the following sources? Please select all that apply:

<1 > CNN

<2> Fox News

<3> MSNBC

<4> Other Cable News TV Networks

<5> Local TV News

<6> National nightly network TV news

<7> News websites or apps

<8> Your local daily print newspaper

<9> National print newspapers

<10> News on the radio

<11> Late night comedy shows

<12> Facebook

<13> Twitter

<14> Reddit

<15> YouTube

<16> Other social media such as LinkedIn, Instagram, or Snapchat

<17> None of these

And respondents could select as many as applied, unless they selected “none of these.” Across the full sample, 34 percent of voters reported getting their news from Fox News (fortunately, only 2 percent of voters reported only getting their news from Fox). Among Republicans, however, fully 62 percent reported getting news from Fox.

While Republican respondents generally report identifying as conservative or very conservative overall, more Fox News viewers identify as “very conservative” (48 percent) than “conservative” (45 percent). The opposite is true of Republicans who don’t watch Fox News, with 47 percent identifying as conservative and just 30 percent identifying as very conservative. Republicans who don’t watch Fox News more often identify as moderate, with 17 percent of non-Fox viewing Republicans identifying as moderate compared to just 6 percent of Fox News-viewing Republicans.