Among voters who were aware of Mitt Romney’s secretly recorded “47 percent” comments, 49 percent said the media dedicated too much coverage to the comments, according to a Pew Research Center survey released this week.
Twenty-eight percent said the comments received the right amount of coverage and just 13 percent said they received too little. Pew’s survey of 1,005 adults, which included 828 registered voters, found that the Republican presidential candidate’s remarks got through to voters: 67 percent of respondents said they knew that Romney made the comments.
Overall, 55 percent of registered voters who knew Romney made the remarks reacted negatively to them. Republicans had mixed reactions to the remarks: 54 percent reacted positively, 17 percent negatively and 29 percent either neutral or didn’t know.
While a plurality of voters feel the press dedicated too much coverage to the comments, reader interest in the story was high. Mother Jones, the magazine that posted the video first, set a personal web traffic record with the story. Mother Jones co-editor Clara Jeffery told the New York Times that the first story the magazine posted, on Sept. 17, received about 2 million page views by mid-afternoon, double the magazine’s previous 24-hour record.
David Taintor
David Taintor is TPM’s News Editor. He contributes to TPM’s Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com
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