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11:46 January 11th, 2008

Age gap widens for Internet campaign news

Posted by: Stuart Grudgings
Tags: Front Row Washington

If you are reading this, chances are good that you are under 30 years old, according to a survey that finds a growing age gap in how Americans get their presidential campaign news.

The proportion of Americans who say they regularly get a campaign fix from the Internet has almost doubled since 2004 to 24 percent from 13 percent, the Pew Research Center found. But older Americans have been slower to make the leap from television, radio and newspapers with the “age gap” for usage rates for campaign news on the Internet more than doubling since the last race. The gap is even more start when it comes to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, which more than a quarter of under 30s say they have used for campaign news compared to just 4 percent of those in their 30s and 1 percent of over 40s.
 
Television still rules, with 60 percent of people saying it is their main source for election news, but that is down from 68 percent in the last two presidential election campaigns.
 
And the Internet horse race? Way ahead of the pack of favorite Web sites for following the fortunes of the Democratic and Republican candidates were MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News.

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