Fox News Scores Top 13 Shows on Cable News in October, Gets Huge Win with Hispanic Viewers
For the 20th consecutive month, Fox News came in as the most-watched cable television network, with a significantly heftier viewership than its competition both in general and in one key demographic: Hispanics.
Fox is, of course, cable news’ answer to the otherwise predominantly left-leaning array of talking head networks, so the fact that it performs so well with audiences in general as well as this key voting bloc is worthy of note less than one week ahead of the midterm elections.
A whopping 13 Fox programs topped the list of the most-watched programs on cable news, garnering 55 percent of prime-time cable news viewers and 54 percent of total day, and beating out CNN and MSNBC in both total overall viewers and preference among viewers in the key 25 to 54 age demographic, Mediaite reported.
During the month of October, Fox enjoyed 1.48 million overall daytime viewers compared to 751,000 for MSNBC and just 533,000 for CNN. For prime-time averages, this jumped to 2.29 million for Fox compared to 1.18 million for MSNBC and 624,000 for CNN.
Forbes noted that MSNBC’s viewership in the 25 to 54 demo saw a 20 percent drop, the largest among cable news networks.
Meanwhile, the top five most-watched shows on cable all air on Fox.
The network’s “The Five” came in at No. 1 for the seventh consecutive month, joined by “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “Jesse Watters Primetime,” “Hannity” and “Special Report with Brett Baier,” which came in second through fifth, respectively.
Mediaite noted that according to Nielsen data, Fox beat out CNN and MSNBC even among Democrats and independents, as well as among Hispanic and Asian viewers.
There’s no point in pretending that Fox doesn’t generally present and defend Republican and right-wing political talking points, while its competition thinly veils left-wing political talking points as objective news. (CNN’s commitment to convincing us its coverage is nonpartisan has really been quite impressive, I’ve got to say, if still entirely ineffective.)
So it is significant that Fox and its lineup of mostly mainstream conservative shows perform so well with viewers, particularly the coveted Hispanic demographic on which the Democrats have clearly been losing their grip over the past year.
Although the left has long since adopted both illegal immigration and racial grievances as cherished political issues to lure voters, it has failed to take into account that Hispanics are not a monolithic group of postmodern critical theorists just because some of them are non-white (imagine that!).
In fact, there are a great many Hispanic people living and voting in the U.S. to whom our country has been a welcoming land of opportunity and safe haven from the wreckage of Marxist political theory wrought on Latin America throughout the 20th century.
For every Hispanic politician like hipster socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there are her conservative counterparts, such as survivors of Cuban or Venezuelan communism who support the family values and cultural conservatism that AOC and her ilk are hell-bent on destroying.
Although Democrats still enjoy a polling advantage with Hispanic voters, that has been on the decline for years, and the 2022 midterms have seen Republicans work hard to court the demographic that the left keeps alienating with its commitment to on-demand abortion, destroying the economy, and sexualizing children.
One year after President Joe Biden took office, a majority of Hispanics disapproved of his performance, and the demo was split evenly between him and former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.
The Washington Post and NPR both recently reported that Democrats have been losing Hispanic support, while in April a Marist poll showed Hispanics’ support for left-wing candidates had declined as their support for GOP candidates rose.
NPR noted that Republicans have noticed the trend and have been working to rally Hispanic support when not long ago, they wouldn’t even have bothered due to the Democratic stronghold on the demographic.
“Republicans used to not compete for this vote,” Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha said. “Up until about eight years ago, Republicans would just walk past a Latino neighborhood. They would never see themselves trying to do a Spanish-language advertisement.”
And while cable news viewership isn’t necessarily a strong indicator of how Hispanics may vote — after all, most Americans get their news from other sources — NPR noted that the typically more progressive younger Hispanics are also less likely to vote.
So while we might guess that it’s older Hispanics who prefer “Hannity” over Jake Tapper, it’s also older Hispanics who are going to take their concern about the economy to the polls.
If Fox’s dominance in cable news is any indication, the left clearly doesn’t have the dominance it once did when it comes to shaping narratives and, sooner or later, it’s going to show up in the polls.
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