The guys at Open Left attack CNBC viewers for not being particularly well informed. I think that they missed the tastiest story about a Pew research poll about news habits.
The tastiest bit is that of all the categories, as measured in the poll, people who get their news from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most informed about US poltics. (at least if you accept Pew’s metric).
Let’s look at the numbers:
| Outlet | US House Control | Name Sec State | Name UK PM | All Three |
| New Yorker/The Atlantic | 71 | 71 | 59 | 48 |
| NPR | 73 | 72 | 57 | 44 |
| Hardball | 76 | 66 | 53 | 43 |
| Hannity | 84 | 73 | 49 | 42 |
| Rush Limbaugh | 83 | 71 | 41 | 36 |
| CNBC | 51 | 45 | 28 | 17 |
| TV News Magazines | 56 | 44 | 28 | 16 |
| All Resp | 53 | 42 | 28 | 18 |
On the question of naming the House majority party, 84% of Hannity viewers get it right. 83% of Limbaugh viewers get it right. Hardball (MSNBC) is next at 76%. I can’t tell if that difference is statistically significant.
On the question of naming teh Secretary of State, Hannity’s viewers are again the highest at 73%, while NPR’s are next, and Limbaugh readers tie with readers of the New Yorker and the Atlantic. (presumably combined because the samples are so small) Here, Hardball viewers are down at 66%.
Now, to get an over-all number that doesn’t place Hannity and Rush at the top, there is a question about UK Prime Minister. And, admittedly, they perform worse. However, somewhat ironically, more Hannity viewers can identify the UK Prime Minister than BBC viewers. And Rush listeners are only 3% less.
Now what to make of all this? Rush and Hannity get bragging rights of a sort.
How does that work for the arrogant lefties who think that they are smarter than everyone? Like those guys at OpenLeft. Not so hot? Then maybe they shouldn’t have started the debate…