Poll: 57% of Americans Are Unaware of – Or Indifferent to – Glenn Beck

by Joe Coscarelli | 10:20 am, September 23rd, 2009

» 3 comments

Around these parts, we’ve often wondered about the relationship between Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and whether Beck’s dazzling ascent to power and influence would inversely affect Limbaugh, the current king of conservative media presence. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, which interviews 1,005 adults about their views on Beck’s favorability, finally allows us to analyze the two head-to-head in a quantifiable manner.

According to the findings, 24% of Americans have a positive view of Beck (including 13% “very positive”), while 19% have a negative opinion of the Fox News host (including 14% “very negative”). The remainder is a whopping 57% of Americans who answered either “Don’t Know Name/Not Sure” or “Neutral” when asked about the seemingly polarizing and popular Beck. Is it possible that rumors of Beck’s influence have been greatly exaggerated? Why don’t we ask Van Jones.

At FiveThirtyEight, polling wunderkind Nate Silver compared Beck’s favorability numbers to a similar poll featuring Limbaugh conducted in June and found that Beck’s numbers compare “quite favorably” to the radio host:

Limbaugh was regarded favorably by 23 percent of Americans, but unfavorably by 50 percent — including 37 percent who held a strongly negative view. This is not a new problem for Limbaugh, incidentally, who has been roughly this unpopular since at least 1995.

Silver sees Beck’s ace in the hole as the fact that he’s “conservative but anti-establishment,” and since most voters “have a haphazard, inconsistent, and somewhat fluid set of views,” Beck represents a figure outside “the tenets of political orthodoxy.” The rest of Silver’s analysis is well worth a read and can be found here.

But there’s a larger meta-issue here, about Beck’s inclusion in the poll altogether, as it at once proves his topical importance and adds to it. And so, there’s another question worth asking: What kind of relative neophyte in broadcasting gets an opinion poll commissioned by a major network and newspaper? The answer, though, is obvious: he’s the same one interviewing with Katie Couric, leading a protest movement and manhandling the ratings.

FiveThirtyEight, Glenn Beck, Katie Couric, Nate Silver, NBC, Rush Limbaugh, wall street journal

http://mediaite.com Steve Krakauer

For what it’s worth, it’s 42% “don’t know name/not sure” and 15% “neutral.”

I think the bigger story is he has higher positive numbers than negative, which is something Rush hasn’t had for more than a dozen years…
ImNotBlue

I think the real reason is that the White House hasn’t actually called out Beck yet… although they’ve “punished” FNC for his comments. As I remember, Limbaugh was called out more frequently by the Democrats in power… they tried to “rally the troops” against him, starting at the top. Beck, on the other hand, has been attacked by a few congress-people, and political activists… but never mentioned by the big guys in the current administration. Therefore, the issue of “disliking Beck” hasn’t become an official White House/Democrat policy… yet.

He also has a smaller audience than Limbaugh, in a time when audiences have a more wide variety of sources to explore. In other words… many reasons why, not a lot of strong assumptions to make.
jimmyfungus

THIS MEANS NOTHING!! America is not engaged right now. They are too busy trying to figure out how to pay the dam bills They don’t know enough about Beck yet. . Besides, I think if you would have looked at Limbaugh’s ratings during the Clinton years they would have been much higher than Beck’s are now. Glenn Beck is more reminiscent of Morton Downey Jr. from the late 80′s early 90′s. But for all the publicity, I don’t consdier Beck or Limbaugh to legitimately be a TRUE conservative. To read a brief history of TRUE conservatism see this article

http://jviz.blogspot.com/2009/08/retraction-i-am-not-dustin-republican.html