However, in every case except one, it was not significant at the 0.05 level. The exceptional contest was gubernatorial. Not only was television news significant here, but also talk radio listening and newspaper reading, both positively. Variance explained for the 48 cases was 23.4 percent. Perhaps here patterns of other media usage mattered because of all contests governors are the only ones where the victor definitely would control a branch of government.
Individual legislators are just one small part of a branch.
With higher stakes, this may make individuals more attentive and more cognizant of where they could get information about these contests and make them consider more fully which sources they considered reliable or not in providing that information. People who access political conferences are disproportionately white, male, educated, have high-status occupations, have higher incomes, and conservative. Party and ideological extremes were well represented, perhaps explaining why there is a fairly good, although polarized, balance of partisans. Finally, some users seem to be influenced by the information they pick in conferences in terms of voting behavior. Voting decisions concerning higher-level contests are more likely to be affected.