I want to draw your attention to a post at Axios from Stef Kight. The post largely consists of a large infographic depicting the Axios-Google news cycle findings for the past year consisting of the volume of interest in 52 different issues over the period. I won’t reproduce it here—cruise on over to the link to see it.
Four issues show sustained high levels of interest: crime, inflation, the border, and audit. I have no idea what “audit” means. Here’s Ms. Kight’s interpretation:
There was relatively high and sustained interest in topics like crime and the border this year — favored midterm talking points by the GOP. However, it was largely in line with interest over the last five years.
Mine is somewhat different: it’s still the economy, stupid. These are the issues that people care about. “Cult of personality” issues, the weather, daily headlines, and niche issues like abortion. critical race theory, and voting rights are not the issues people care about. The media (whether legacy or social) can gin up interest in one or the other of those peripheral issues for short periods but that doesn’t make them the issues people care about which, yes, are pretty constant.
Any political party can do worse than devote attention to the issues people care about.
Dave, I couldn’t tell, was that chart available online, or something Google sells?
If you select the link at the top of my post, it will take you to a post at Axios that contains the graphic.