A little over a year ago, I wrote on this blog about my theory of the electorates.
http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/the_theory_of_the_two_electorates.html
My theory is that because of the internet and cable TV, people like us who live and breathe politics (let’s call us the informed electorate) know much, much more about it than ever before and that everybody else (let’s call them the vast majority) know much less than before for the same reasons.
And that's one reason why the opinions of pundits are so often wrong. They think that we few members of the informed electorate actually represent everybody else.
Nowhere is this disconnect greater than on the 3 cable news networks. Virtually nobody watching cable news chatter about politics are among the undecided voters – we faithful viewers watch either to get talking points that back up our views or to learn with the opposition is saying.
But this doesn’t stop people in politics and the media from acting as though what is said on cable really matters and that the cable gasbags are influential.
That brings us to cable’s latest flavor of the week. Just last week, the NY Times profiled the latest cable yakker – Glen Beck
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30beck.html
The Times said –
“(H)is program is a phenomenon: it typically draws about 2.3 million viewers”
2.3 million!
This reminded me of Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movie demanding ONE MILLION DOLLARS. But the writers and viewers of the movie knew it was a joke. The Times writer and most their readers probably think 2.3 million viewers are significant.
That’s 2.3 million out of a US population of 300 million, where over 130 million voted for President last year.
To give you an idea of how unphenomenal Beck’s 2.3 million viewers is, it is less than half of the weekly viewers of WWE Raw.