From Politico:

The Gallup polling company reported Monday that Americans these days are paying closer attention to political news than in any nonelection year since the company started tracking the issue in 2001.“Americans’ consumption of political news has expanded over the past decade,” Gallup reported. “The trend may reflect a greater politicization of the American public, regardless of political ideology, as attention is up among all three party groups [Democrats, Republicans and independents]. However, the increase since 2007 (from 30 percent to 36 percent) in the percentage following political news very closely may also stem from Barack Obama’s busy legislative agenda in his first year as president.”

Gallup reported that 36 percent of those surveyed said they follow political news very closely, 42 percent said they follow it somewhat closely, 16 percent said they follow it not too closely, and 6 percent said they don’t follow political news at all.

The share saying they follow the news very closely is down from the record high of 43 percent in September 2008…

More Democrats (with an increase in very close attention from 21 percent in 2001 to 30 percent today) and Republicans (from 29 percent to 41 percent) are now following the news this closely than was the case eight years ago; independents show a slightly larger gain (from 18 percent to 37 percent),” Gallup reported.

It is good to hear that the public is becoming more informed about the political news of the day. Hopefully, this will lead to increased calls for government transparency and a press corps that really doubles down on investigative work. The demand is there; hopefully, the supply-side will increase with it.

One hopes that the onslaught of new-media is enough to keep this trend going.