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Thankfully, it looks like the peak of Angry Dumb White Male Power
might have passed. Maybe not, I thought it had gone with Newt
Gengrich...

DSK

Here's a study from 1996 on who listens to Limbaugh. Limbaugh listeners
are wealthier and better educated than the average American, not less.

--------------------------------

Call-In Political Talk Radio: Background, Content, Audiences,
Portrayal in Mainstream Media

A Report from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of
the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of
Joseph N. Cappella, Joseph Turow and Kathleen Hall
Jamieson and funded by The Ford Foundation and the
Carnegie Corporation of New York

7 August 1996

THE ANNENBERG PUBLIC POLICY CENTER
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

[snip]

Table 2. Four Political Talk Radio (PTR) Groups

Demographics by Percentage -- Political Talk Radio (PTR) Listeners

Demographic Non- Limbaugh Conservative Lib/Mod.
Listener Listener Listener Listener

Male 47.2 61 54 54.8
Female 52.8 39 46 45.2

Age 18-29 22.1 18.8 16.9 14.9
Age 30-49 44.4 43.0 49.3 53.6
Age 50-64 19.1 21.3 19.1 16.7
Age 65+ 14.4 16.9 14.7 14.9

high school 10.0 03.3 03.6 06.8
HS graduate 35.1 31.3 21.6 26.7
Some college 26.7 30.8 34.5 20.6
College grad 28.2 34.6 40.3 45.9

Income $20 K 25.7 14.3 12.9 18.7
Income $20-30 K 20.5 21.9 12.1 19.0
Income $30-50 K 26.0 24.5 30.6 23.0
Income $50 K 27.8 39.3 44.4 39.3

White 77.5 89.2 83.5 79.2
Non-White 22.5 10.8 16.5 20.8

Conservative 32.4 70.0 47.8 19.5
Moderate 44.2 21.4 34.1 51.1
Liberal 23.3 08.6 18.1 29.4
Republican 26.3 61.4 44.8 17.8
Independent 38.1 24.8 29.1 39.0
Democrat 35.6 13.8 26.1 43.1


Political Knowledge and Participation

2. Regular political talk radio listeners are more likely than
non-listeners to consume all types of news media (excepting tv
news), to be more knowledgeable about politics and social issues,
and to be involved in political activities. This is true regardless
of the ideology of the hosts of the programs to which they listen.
In other words, Limbaugh’s audience is no more or less knowledgeable
or active than the audience for moderate/liberal or conservative
talk radio. However listeners to Conservative talk radio are more
likely to vote than are listeners to Limbaugh or Liberal/Moderate
political talk radio.

KNOWLEDGE

Survey respondents were asked a variety of questions about their
knowledge of political and social issues. They were asked about how
much they felt they knew about various topics in the news (e.g."How
much do you feel you know about the debate in Washington about the
budget?"). They were also asked factual questions about civics (e.g.
the percentage of the House and Senate required to override a
presidential veto), general information (e.g., the percentage of
welfare mothers receiving benefits for more than 3 years), and
current information in the news (e.g. the number of troops in Bosnia
who are members of the U.S. armed forces).

Two conclusions obtain. First, regular listeners of PTR have higher
levels of knowledge and correctly think they have higher levels of
knowledge than non-listeners. Second, regular listeners of Rush
Limbaugh, Conservative, and Liberal/Moderate PTR are no different
from one another in actual or reported knowledge. This is true of
civics knowledge, general factual knowledge about social and
political issues, and factual knowledge about things in the news.
The claims are based on knowledge and felt knowledge scores after
they are corrected for a variety of controls including education,
sex, gender, age, main stream media exposure, and ideology.

The audience of PTR may bring some special characteristics with it
to the medium which we are unable to measure. Or the content of PTR
may add to or facilitate the audience’s store of knowledge. What is
clear is that for the questions we used, no one audience of PTR --
Limbaugh’s or others -- is different in social or political
knowledge, from the other listeners.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

In previous surveys, PTR listeners have been shown to have higher
levels of political participation than others. Some hosts may
encourage their listeners to oppose or support specific issues. For
example, our content analysis of Limbaugh’s show suggested that a
substantial proportion of his time is spent on personal and
political efficacy.

Respondents were asked about their participation in political
affairs including contacting public officials, contributing money,
contacting newspapers or TV stations, and so on. Other forms of
participation include a general question on following what’s going
on in public affairs and government and reported voting frequency.

Regular listeners of PTR report higher levels of political
participation, closer following of politics and government, and
higher levels of voting than those who do not listen regularly.
These differences remain after a variety of controls for
demographic, party and ideological differences, and exposure to
other media. With one exception, which we will note in a moment,
those who listen regularly to Rush Limbaugh, Conservative, and
Liberal/Moderate PTR do not differ from one another in
participation, or the extent they follow "what’s going on in
government and public affairs."

The same findings (under the same set of controls) obtain on
measures of political efficacy ("people like me don’t have any say
...") and political meaninglessness ("there aren’t any important
differences between Republicans and Democrats ..."). Regular
listeners are higher in efficacy and lower in meaninglessness than
non-regular listeners (even after controls) indicating that they
believe that politics is important and they can influence government
and politicians. No differences were found among the three regular
listener groups.

One exception to this pattern which is not readily explainable is
that listeners to Conservative PTR report higher levels of voting
than any other group and this effect remains even after differences
due to audience characteristics and media exposure are removed.
Since there are no other differences in political participation,
knowledge, media use, or other obvious factors which would explain
these differences, we have an anomaly without an explanation.

As with knowledge questions, those who are regular listeners of PTR
have elevated levels of political involvement either because PTR
activates their involvement or because of some unknown
characteristics the audience brings with it to PTR. What can be said
is that the consumers of PTR are political activists.