Will Jordan

Media Consumption Trends 2025: Engaging Passive News Consumers | Global Strategy Group In today’s fast-shifting information ecosystem, communicators face a fundamental challenge: Americans are divided when it comes to news media consumption habits. Active consumers deliberately seek out...

These slides come from our recent survey report - find more here:
globalstrategygroup.com/2025/10/27/e...

I don't think "passive news consumption" is a new or a social media phenomenon. But the growing role of recommendation engines means everyone is getting more of what they "seem to want" so passive/active may be come a more politically salient difference than it ever has been.

Something somewhat counter-intuitive is "passive news consumer" is not a very distinctive type of social media user--tho there are notable exceptions (less X/Reddit, more TikTok). But they get less news online probably due to a mix of who they follow & what algos think they want.

These news consumption habits are closely related to political engagement, but not identical. "Do you seek out the news" means something slightly different than "is politics important to you."

I continue to love this simple survey question as a way to divide the public. It cuts across partisanship -- Rs may hate "the media" but they have engaged/attentive voters on favored platforms (Fox/X) just like Ds.

My sense is it will be hard for people to add House seats in Texas this year. But generally Dem poor turnout and weakness at the House level was in safe Dem seats, not competitive seats where they did well almost everywhere relative to Harris. That’s partly why there are so many Trump-seat-Dems.

What part did you find over complicated?

House battleground very different in 2026 vs 2018

'18
Rs defend 65 seats @ Trump+10/bluer
Ds defend 30 @ Clinton+10/redder

'26
Rs defend 30 seats @ Trump+10/bluer
Ds defend 62 @ Harris+10/redder

BUT

'18
Ds need 24 (37% of R defensive seats)

'26
Ds need 3 (10% of R defensive seats)

In-party disaffection for Democrats is coming from the left, where voters are still likely to vote for Democrats in elections.

But among Republicans, it’s moderates and conservatives who rate the GOP image worse. That’s a bigger problem, because those voters are likelier to cross over and vote Dem.

This is a great question to ask. As someone left of center, if you think the answer is the second one, think hard about what needs to change or accept you believe there is basically no chance of Democrats controlling the Senate and passing real laws or nominating judges for the next decade or so.

This new Navigator tracking survey has Democrats taking the lead over Trump in H2H on taxes, inflation, and the economy for the first time in I’m not sure how long (a while). Trump led on all 3 in late February.

Opinion | I Worked for Harris and Biden. Here’s the Missing Link for Democrats. Opt-out voters don’t buy what we’re selling — and even if they did, we’d have a hard time reaching them.

And here’s the NYT piece I mentioned at the top: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...

Media Consumption Insights 2025: Key Trends for Communicators Streaming has surpassed traditional TV. Social media is now a primary news source for millions. And trust in mainstream media is falling.

Most of the report and points above can be found at the link here: globalstrategygroup.com/2025/04/15/u...

This debate about opt-in vs opt-out/news engagement is not just about reaching difficult to reach audiences. The “news comes to me”/opt-out voters care most about different issues, may respond to diff message/branding. Less about concept of “democracy, foreign policy—more about taxes & health care.

Dems have to contend w/the “engagement divide” too. We found the *only* major demo/political group that trusted “the media” was solid Dems. Disengaged voters are deeply distrustful. Related factors. But professional Ds (like me) must view world less like top bar in this chart, more like the bottom.

But disengaged voters, which are mostly on the margins of Trump’s coalition, are the ones to watch now. See what we found below: DOGE/Musk/Econ policies earn much less support from new, less engaged Trump voters. These issues likely become a wedge for Trump coalition.

Trump won most of the disengaged voters in 2024. The sort of voter who thought Obama was cool but didn’t love “politics” (or politicians). This made Trump’s otherwise narrow victory unusually disruptive of politics as usual. Political engagement seems closely related to news engagement (no surprise)

Rather than follow the lines of politics, news engagement cuts across them. And importantly it does a lot to divide the voters we (and they) need to solidify and persuade from those who are bought in. This divide has probably always existed, but media trends have likely deepened it. From our study:

What’s different about this question from many Qs in politics, is the *lack* of polarization—by party or by race. This dimension, which we can call “news engagement,” cuts across other dimensions, and tells us something your party & demographics alone cannot. Makes a potentially powerful tool.

We at GSG discussed this recently in a report reviewing media consumption trends, which I’ll link below. Here’s a question we’ve started asking more often: When it comes to news about current events and politics, do you … seek it out, or does news come to you?

What do you notice?

Enjoyed this piece from @robflaherty.bsky.social Recently we have been studying a similar concept to the “opt in” and “opt out” voters in our polling, and I think it’s incredibly useful for understanding how current trends in political behavior and media habits are related…

A striking set of results from Navigator Research. A lot of the time simple language tweaks make little difference, but here, voters are much more comfortable agreeing with a position once it criticizes the status quo.

To hold the power to pass major legislation over next decade, Democrats need to run the sort of candidates and be the sort of party that can win/defend Senate seats in every swing state and win seats in Trump+10/+15 states. It’s about necessity as much as opportunity.

To hold the power to pass major legislation over next decade, Democrats need to run the sort of candidates and be the sort of party that can win/defend Senate seats in every swing state and win seats in Trump+10/+15 states. It’s about necessity as much as opportunity.

Really seems British voters like to pretend to pollsters they live in a democracy with a proportional representation system until there’s an election and then, eventually, they voter for a party that can win in their constituency. Epistemologically difficult to read the mood.

Harris was perceived as more liberal than Biden, Clinton, or Obama had been when they ran. And while people saw Trump as more conservative than they had previously, they were still closer ideologically to him (1.62 points away) than Harris (2.06). cooperativeelectionstudy.shinyapps.io/Ideology/

Striking parallel between Trump and Liz Truss in terms of the power of economics/markets to turn even one’s own partisans against you.

Trump isn’t losing any support over his performative cruelty towards immigrants, but is rapidly losing Republicans over economic policy, stock market, inflation etc

At the regional/county level, the 2023->2025 swing is very similar to the 2020->2024 swing.

(Notice Crawford and Harris both did relatively well in suburban WOW)

Similarly, at the county level, there is no real correlation between Wisconsin counties with higher turnout and better or worse performance by the liberal candidate (Crawford)

So far there is not a clear relationship between special election turnout and Democratic over performance.

If anything higher salience/turnout specials like FL-01/06 have been better for Democrats than the average (average swing is +11%D so far in 2025)