The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

20 min. 40 min. 60 min. 80 min. 100 min. 120 min.

40%

20%

60%

80% of peak

Peak viewership

Dem.

households

Rep.

households

Debate

start

End of debate

Source: 605 THE NEW YORK TIMES

More Republican households watched this year’s presidential debates

than Democratic ones, but the Republican watchers were slightly

likelier to turn them off earlier in the night. And during the so-called

dueling town halls by President Trump and Joe Biden, Democratic

and Republican households mostly watched the town hall of their

own party, according to 605, a television viewership analytics firm.

The First Presidential Debate

At the request of The New York

Times, analysts at 605 used de-

tailed, anonymized viewership

data from more than 22 million

households, linked to anonymized

voter registration records, to

reveal Americans’ debate view-

ing patterns with a degree of

precision rarely seen by the

public.

The data from 605 indicates

that more Republicans than

Democrats watched the first

debate, but that relative to their

peak viewership, Republican

households tuned out sooner than

Democrats, especially in the

post-debate period.

This data describes viewership

patterns among households with

televisions, including smart TVs

and those who watch via TV

streaming and cable. It does not

include streaming on laptops or

mobile devices.

Republicans might have been

more likely to tune into local

news or another program instead

of watching post-debate cover-

age. But it’s also possible that

Republican households might

have stopped watching at higher

rates because they felt that their

candidate was faring poorly, said

Shanto Iyengar, a political-sci-

ence professor at Stanford who

has studied mass media in demo-

cratic societies. (Mr. Trump was

criticized for interrupting Mr.

Biden repeatedly and lost instant-

reaction polls after the debate.)

People seek out good news and

avoid bad news about their pre-

ferred group or team, and if

presented with information that

conflicts with those preferences,

it’s easier to look away than to

endure it, he said. “If a team is

down, 25-0, the fans of the losing

team will find something else to

watch,” he said.

The data also describes the

networks that Democratic and

Republican households preferred.

Democratic households were

much more likely to watch the

first debate on MSNBC or CNN,

while Republican households

were much more likely to watch

it on Fox News.

After the debate, many viewers

shifted toward cable news net-

works like Fox News and CNN

for post-debate coverage, pre-

sumably to see what other people

thought about how their candi-

date did.

“Most people watching the

debates have a hard time know-

ing who’s up or who’s down,” said

Thomas Wood, a political-science

professor at Ohio State. “What

we found was that it’s useful to

see someone boil it down.”

Dueling Town Halls

The dueling town halls — the

nearly simultaneous events the

candidates held after Mr. Trump

refused to participate in a virtual

debate — presented a natural

experiment in partisanship and

viewership. Since Mr. Biden’s

town hall was 30 minutes longer

than President Trump’s, we

looked only at the first hour

when both town halls were aired

simultaneously.

In another twist, people had

limited channels to watch the

town halls (ABC for Mr. Biden,

and NBC and its family of chan-

nels for Mr. Trump). “For the

first time in anyone’s life, they

were forced to watch the debate

on one network if they wanted to

watch their guy,” Mr. Wood said.

The data from 605 revealed

that more Democratic house-

holds — households with at least

one adult who is a registered

Democrat — opted to watch Mr.

Biden’s town hall. And, for Re-

publican households, the oppo-

site was true. (Households with

voters registered to different

parties are not counted in this

analysis.)

But that doesn’t mean viewers

ignored the other party. During

commercial breaks — the spikes

you see punctuating the top and

bottom of the charts — viewers

in both parties switched channels

to check out what was going on

in the other town hall. But, more

often than not, when the com-

mercial was over, they switched

back to their own candidate’s

town hall.

There were other subtle differ-

ences: More Democratic house-

holds tended to switch over to

the Trump town hall than Repub-

lican households tended to switch

over to the Biden town hall.

Thursday’s Presidential Debate

The presidential debate Thursday

was calmer than the first debate,

and we did not see a partisan

drop-off at the same scale. In all,

far fewer households of both

parties watched the debate,

perhaps reflecting lesser interest

or stiffer competition from other

programming. An N.F.L. game

between the Philadelphia Eagles

and the New York Giants aired

around the same time.

Note: Estimates are shown only for states with

information about voter registration. Data

shown here represents patterns among viewers

who watched the debates and town halls live.

Debates: Who Turned On,

Tuned In or Dropped Out

By KEVIN QUEALY and QUOCTRUNG BUI

Source: 605 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Democratic households Republican households

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THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 N 31

Election

Still, despite one of the worst
years in recent American history,
the issue on which Mr. Trump gets
his highest approval ratings re-
mains the economy. It points to
the resilience of his reputation as
a savvy businessman and hard-
nosed negotiator. And it is evi-
dence that his most enduring eco-
nomic legacy may not rest in any
statistical almanac, but in how
much he has shifted the conversa-
tion around the economy.
Long before Mr. Trump ap-
peared on the political stage, pow-
erful forces were reshaping the
economy and inciting deep-rooted
anxieties about secure middle-in-
come jobs and America’s eco-
nomic pre-eminence in the world.
Mr. Trump recognized, stoked and
channeled those currents in ways
that are likely to persist whether
he wins or loses the election.
By ignoring economic and polit-
ical orthodoxies, he at times suc-
cessfully married seemingly con-
tradictory or inconsistent posi-
tions to win over both hard-core
capitalists and the working class.
There would be large tax breaks
and deregulation for business

owners and investors, and trade

protection and aid for manufac-

turers, miners and farmers.

In the process, he scrambled

party positions on key issues like

immigration and globalization,

and helped topple sacred verities

about government debt. He took a

Republican Party that preached

free trade, low spending and debt

reduction and transformed it into

one that picked trade wars even

with allies, ran up record-level

peacetime deficits and shielded

critical social programs from cuts.

“He completely moved the Re-

publican Party away from reduc-

ing Social Security and Medicare

spending,” said Michael R. Strain,

an economist at the conservative

American Enterprise Institute.

On immigration, Mr. Trump re-

made the political landscape in a

different way. He has accused im-

migrants of stealing jobs or com-

mitting crimes and — as he did in

Thursday night’s debate — con-

tinued to disparage their intelli-

gence. In doing so, he rallied hard-

line sentiments that could be

found in each party and turned

them into a mostly Republican cri

de coeur.

The Democrats changed in

turn. Former Vice President Jo-

seph R. Biden Jr. has positioned

himself as the champion of immi-

grants, pledging to reverse Mr.

Trump’s most restrictive policies,

while rejecting more radical pro-

posals like eliminating the Immi-

gration and Customs Enforce-

ment agency.

He has also been pushed to fi-

nesse his position on fracking and

the oil industry, promising not to

ban the controversial drilling

method on private lands, and try-

ing — with mixed success — to

walk back comments he had made

at the presidential debate about

transitioning from fossil fuels.

Shifts on trade were more mo-

mentous. Mr. Biden and other

party leaders who had once pro-

moted the benefits of globaliza-

tion found themselves playing de-

fense against a Republican who

outflanked them on issues like in-

dustrial flight and foreign compe-

tition. They responded by em-

bracing elements of protectionism

that they had abandoned.

No matter who spends the next

four years in the White House,

economic policy is likely to pay

more attention to American jobs

and industries threatened by

China and other foreign competi-

tion and less attention to deficits

caused by government efforts to

stimulate the economy.

The reshuffling is clear to

Charles Jefferson, the managing

owner of Montage Mountain Ski

Resort near Scranton, Pa.

“Those were not conversations

we were having five years ago,” he

said. “The exodus of manufactur-

ing jobs, that was considered a fait

accompli.”

Mr. Jefferson, 55, grew up in

North Philadelphia in a blue-col-

lar union family and remembers

the hemorrhaging of jobs that

many Democratic leaders said

was unstoppable in a globalized

world — even though such posi-

tions were deeply unpopular with

many rank-and-file Democrats.

Manufacturing revived after

bottoming out during the Great

Recession but floundered during

President Barack Obama’s second

term. Mr. Jefferson, who said he

voted for Mr. Obama, supported

Mr. Trump in 2016. He plans to do

so again.

The sector still represents a rel-

atively small slice of the economy,

accounting for 11 percent of the

country’s total output and em-

ploying less than 9 percent of

American workers. But Mr.

Trump has been a relentless

cheerleader. While he often took

credit for manufacturing jobs at

companies like General Motors

and Foxconn that later disap-

peared or never materialized, the

pace of hiring in the sector sped

up considerably in 2018 before

stalling out last year.

As a result, in this election, un-

like the last, the significance of

manufacturing and the need for a

more skeptical approach to free

trade are not contested.

Mr. Biden, after decades of sup-

porting trade pacts, is now run-

ning on a “made in all of America”

program that promises to “use full

power of the federal government

to bolster American industrial and

technological strength.” He has

also vowed to use the tax code to

encourage businesses to keep or

create jobs on American soil.

Even voters who don’t particu-

larly like Mr. Trump credit him

with re-energizing the economy.

Walter Dealtrey Jr., who runs a

tire service, sales and retreading

business in Bethlehem that his fa-

ther started 65 years ago, said he

voted for Mr. Trump, but he was

never a big fan of the president.

“He talks too much,” said Mr.

Dealtrey, who’s been around long

enough to distinguish a new

Goodyear or Michelin tire by its

smell. “And his tone is terrible.” A

year ago, he had considered sup-

porting a moderate Democrat like

Mr. Biden or Senator Amy

Klobuchar of Minnesota.

But with Election Day just over

a week away, Mr. Dealtrey plans

to once again support the presi-

dent. Even after a few slow

months in the spring and some

layoffs among the 960 people he

employed at his company, Service

Tire Truck Centers, he still trusts

Mr. Trump on the economy.

Mr. Dealtrey talked as he

walked around stacks of giant

tires that towered above his own

six-foot frame, a Stonehenge-size

monument to wheeled transport.

He likes the president’s focus on

“big manufacturing” and the way

he “instills confidence in busi-

nesses to invest in this country.”

Just how much responsibility

Mr. Trump deserves for reframing

some key economic issues is up

for debate. Frustration about job

losses in the United States has

been brewing for decades; the

parties were diverging on immi-

gration; and antagonism toward

China over trade practices, suspi-

cions of technology theft and its

authoritarian tactics extends be-

yond the United States.

“I don’t think he really has

pushed the boundaries of any of

those policy issues beyond where

they already were,” said Mr.

Strain of the American Enterprise

Institute.

Similarly, Jason Furman, a

chairman of the Council of Eco-

nomic Advisers during the Obama

administration, argues that Mr.

Trump was pushed along by the

same trends and forces that

spurred his supporters. And on

some issues, like immigration, he

caused public opinion to move in

the opposite direction.

In the end, it may turn out that

the president’s most significant

impact on economic policy is not

one that he intended: overturning

the conventional wisdom about

the impact of government deficits.

By simultaneously pursuing

steep tax cuts for businesses and

wealthy individuals, raising mili-

tary spending and ruling out

Medicare and Social Security re-

ductions, Mr. Trump presided

over unprecedented trillion-dollar

deficits. Emergency pandemic re-

lief added to the bill. Such sums

were supposed to cause interest

rates and inflation to spike and

crowd out private investment.

They didn’t.

“Trump has done a lot to legiti-

mize deficit spending,” Mr. Fur-

man said.

Mr. Furman is one of several

economists and bankers who have

called for Washington to let go of

its debt obsession. Investing in in-

frastructure, health care, educa-

tion and job creation are worth

borrowing for, they argue, particu-

larly in an era of low interest rates.

That doesn’t mean the issue has

disappeared. Republicans will un-

doubtedly oppose deficits result-

ing from proposals put forward by

a Democratic White House — and

vice versa. But warnings about

the calamitous consequences of

federal borrowing are unlikely to

have the same resonance as be-

fore the Trump presidency.

Back in his office, Mr. Dealtrey

remembers how disturbed he

once was about the size of the

deficit. “I used to care about my

kids and grandkids being stuck

with it,” he said, leaning back in

his chair. “But nobody cares any-

more.”

“Maybe I don’t care anymore,”

he said, momentarily surprised at

his own words. “We’ve got bigger

problems than that.”

President’s Legacy Goes Beyond the Numbers

From Page 1

‘Trump has been the savior of American

industry. He got it. He’s the only one.’

BRUCE HAINES, who spent decades as an executive at U.S. Steel
before becoming a managing partner of Historic Hotel Bethlehem.

Walter Dealtrey Jr., who runs a tire service in Bethlehem, Pa., said he was never a big fan of the president though he voted for him.

Companies like Service Tire Truck Centers saw business drop at
the start of the pandemic, but for many it has since come back.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HANNAH YOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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