How Anti-Trump Conservatives Have Fled Fox News (Analysis)

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(CNN) -

Former Fox News contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes decided to leave the network last week.

The two have long been concerned that former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen.

Tucker Carlson's "Patriot Purge" full of falsehoods on Fox Nation about what happened on January 6 was the final straw.

The Goldberg / Hayes saga is a manifestation of a broader trend.

Right-wing media audiences like Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network don't want to resist Trump, even if it means they are resisting the truth.

Republicans who do not receive the news from these networks are much more unfavorable for the former president.

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We can see this well in a CNN / SSRS poll conducted in August and September.

In the poll, I isolated Republicans and independents who had Republican leanings and who preferred to receive their television or digital news only from Fox News, Newsmax, or One America News Network.

Almost evenly (88% to 11%), Republican voters who like to hear from these conservative outlets believe that President Joe Biden did not legitimately get enough votes to win the presidency.

In other words, almost every Republican in the conservative media audience thinks that a blatant falsehood is true.

The majority of Republican voters (57%) who follow cable or digital news and who did not include Fox News, Newsmax or OANN (e.g. The New York Times or said they did not have a favorite) as their main source as well They falsely believe that Biden did not win the election legitimately.

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This level, however, is much lower than among those who like to receive their news from the conservative media.

Furthermore, a significantly higher proportion of these Republicans (42%) believe the truth, that Biden legitimately received enough votes to win the presidency.

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However, the difference between these two audiences is not simply about opinions about the 2020 election. It is how important those views are to your identity as Republicans.

Republican voters who prefer to hear from Fox, Newsmax, or OANN are three times more likely (57% to 18%) to indicate that thinking that Trump won in 2020 is very important to what being a Republican means to them.

That is, even if the majority of Republicans - regardless of where they like to get their news from - have false beliefs about 2020, those views are much more ingrained among those who prefer such conservative media.

A different portion of the data may better indicate this.

Only 11% of those who prefer the conservative media say that thinking that Trump won in 2020 is not that important to what it means to be a Republican.

This rises to 38% among Republican voters who prefer other media.

Importantly, this shows that the percentage of the non-conservative media audience who say Trump is not all that important to his Republican identity is much higher than those who say he is very important.

The opposite is true among Republican voters who prefer conservative media.

Now perhaps the big question is whether this is correlation (meaning Trump supporters are less likely to watch conservative media all the time) or causation (meaning conservative media makes people believe that Biden didn't win? rightfully).

The answer is probably both.

Yes, Republicans who prefer to get their news from conservative media were more likely to vote for Trump in 2020 (99% to 83%) among those who did vote.

But even among Republicans who voted for Trump, 31% of those who prefer to receive their news outside of the conservative media believe that Biden legitimately won.

This is a low percentage, but it is significantly higher than the 10% of those who like to receive their news from Fox News, Newsmax or OANN.

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Similarly, the percentage of Trump Republican voters who prefer their news from non-conservative media and think that Trump's victory in 2020 is very important to Republican identity (21%) is only about a third among those who prefer to get its news from conservative media (60%).

This should come as no surprise, given how much some in the conservative media have toyed with the idea that Biden did not win legitimately.

Looking ahead, it seems unlikely that different views of Trump among Republicans will dissipate based on their choice of news consumption.

Republicans who prefer to receive news from Fox News, Newsmax or One America News Network are still Trump supporters, far more than those who are not.

A large 53% of Republican voters who get their news from the conservative media say that supporting Trump is very important to being a Republican.

It is only 21% among those who obtain their media from other television or digital sources.

Another way to measure this is by examining those who argue that backing Trump is not at all important to his Republican identity.

These are arguably some of the most fervent anti-Trump Republicans.

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