South Florida Democratic district home to most Fox News viewers across country
The congressional district with the highest share of Fox News viewers anywhere in the U.S. is in a somewhat surprising place: heavily Democratic Palm Beach County.
A comprehensive analysis of more than a year’s worth of polling data by Morning Consult produced the cable TV news consumption findings for every congressional district in the U.S.
Fox News, which is the favorite cable TV outlet of President Donald Trump and many Republicans, was by far the preferred source of cable news across the country — nowhere more than in the 21st Congressional District, which includes more than half of Palm Beach County’s voters.
Among all adults, 47% of District 21 residents reporting watching Fox News at least once a week, the highest of all 435 congressional districts in the U.S. The national average is 32.7%.
Among independent voters in the district, 38.8% reported watching Fox News at least once a week, ninth in the nation. Among Republicans, 68.9% in District 21 watched Fox at least once a week, 10th in the nation.
The No. 2 district nationally for Fox News viewers is also in Florida. In the 11th Congressional District, which includes the Villages, the Central Florida Republican stronghold, and runs to the Gulf Coast, 44.3% of adults report watching Fox at least once a week.
Two others make the Top 10: 43% of all adults reported watching Fox News at least once a week in the 12th District, located along the Gulf Coast in Pasco and parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, and in the 25th District, which includes parts of Miami-Dade, Collier and Hendry counties. They are tied for seventh place in Fox viewership nationally. 21st District: It isn’t clear what makes Fox News so popular in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County. The partisan voting index from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the district as D plus 9, which means it performed 9 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole in the past two presidential contests.
The 21st District is represented by U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat. The district takes in West Palm Beach and most of the populated areas of Palm Beach County south of Southern Boulevard except Boca Raton.
It includes the moneyed enclaves of Palm Beach, home of the Mar-a-Lago Club, which Trump and first lady Melania Trump recently declared as their outside-of-Washington home, and Manalapan. The district also includes some vast condominium communities — including Century Village west of Boca Raton and Kings Point west of Delray Beach — that are home to many retirees.
Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Barry University, said no factor jumps out to explain Fox’s popularity in the district. The frequent presence of Trump, who visits Mar-aLago often in the winter season; the population of older voters, a prime Fox News demographic, and
Fox’s support for Israel in an area with many Jewish residents, could all play roles.
Morning Consult reported there “was no correlation between concentration in Fox News viewership and the political leanings of a district.” Six of the 15 districts with the highest Fox viewership leaned Republican and five of the 15 were Democratic.
The 11th, 12th and 25th districts either lean or are heavily Republican, and all are represented by Republicans in Congress.
Many Democrats look elsewhere: Morning Consult reported that 64.2% of 21st District Democrats reported watching CNN at least once a week — higher than any other district in the country.
It also found that 47% of Democrats who live in the district report watching MSNBC at least once a week, fourth-highest among the nation’s 435 districts.
CNN bills itself as more neutral than either rightleaning Fox News or leftleaning MSNBC, although Republicans decry it as liberal-leaning and it is a frequent target of criticism from Trump over coverage he doesn’t like.
At his Nov. 26 rally at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Trump encouraged the crowed to boo the news media, referring to “that stupid, corrupt, horrible CNN.” The crowd responded by chanting “CNN sucks.”
In the 23rd Congressional District, which takes in southern and western Broward and northeast Miami-Dade County, 32.3% of all adults watch MSNBC at least once a week — well above the national average of 19.8%.
Among independents in the 23rd District, 26.5% watched MSNBC at least once a week, ranking eighth in the nation.
CNN also fared better than average in the 23rd District, with 43.4% of all adults saying they watched at least once a week. Nationally, 27.9% of all adults watched CNN at least once a week.
CNN’s 23rd District viewership among all adults was 11th in the nation. Among Democrats, 56.6% reported at least weekly viewing of CNN.
The partisan voting index from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the district — represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — as D plus 11, which means it performed 11 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole in the past two presidential contests.
About the numbers: Morning Consult provides research, news and brandtracking technology for companies and conducts surveys for many major media organizations. It conducts a daily online survey of at least 5,000 respondents.
It calculated the popularity of each cable network for every congressional district by using data from a year’s worth of surveys, conducted from Nov. 1, 2018, through Oct. 31, 2019. It said the data represented more than 1.1 million responses.