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Pew Study: Fox News was No. 1 news source — for Trump voters

Forty percent of Americans who said they voted for Donald Trump said they relied on Fox News as their main source of election news before Nov. 8, a stark contrast with Americans who said they voted for Hillary Clinton, only 3 percent of whom relied on the cable news channel as their main source of election-related news.

The findings, from a study released by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday, reflect a continued partisan divide in the media consumption habits around the country.

Americans who said they voted for Clinton reported a more diverse array of news sources than Americans who said they voted for Trump, with no one news source named by more than one in five self-identified Clinton voters. About 18 percent of Clinton voters said they relied on CNN as their main source of election news; other sources, like The New York Times and MSNBC, hovered between 5 and 9 percent.

Eight percent of Trump voters relied on CNN for their main election news, according to the survey results.

All in all, most respondents said they relied on television news as their main source of election news. About the same percentage of Trump and Clinton voters relied on news sources like CBS and NBC News, as well as local television stations.

In the primaries, however, Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters who supported Clinton said they relied on news from MSNBC and local television at higher rates than Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t support the candidate. Only 37 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters who did not support Clinton during the primaries relied on television news for their election news, compared to nearly 48 percent of those who used news websites and social media for their news over television.

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters in the primaries, Trump supporters and opponents alike said they used TV, print, radio and digital news sources for election news at similar rates.

In the general election, 8 percent of Trump voters and Clinton voters said they relied on Facebook for the main source of their election-related news. (The study noted that the specific news outlets that appeared in individuals’ Facebook feeds most likely varied.) But overall, digital news publishers were not reported to be a main source of election news during the primaries or the general election. Instead, a majority of voters said they received most of their election-related news from television.

The study surveyed 4,183 adults who are members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, which the Center says is nationally representative. The survey was conducted over two weeks beginning Nov. 29, 2016.

