What media do Millennials rely on for election news? Political marketers addressing the youth vote would be wise to avoid overreliance on Internet media. Among the 88% of Millennials who are actively seeking or at least paying attention to the 2008 election, there is as much reliance on old fashioned TV news as on flashy Internet web sites. According to a study by Crawford, Johnson, Northcott, a respected audience research firm, “Even with all of the media options available to Americans, television still rules – at least as a source for presidential election information.” CJN’s research shows National, Local and Cable TV News are the three most relied upon media sources for election news across every age group — including 18-29 year olds.

What about Internet media, surely young people are more likely to turn to the web for news than their parents or Gen X’ers? Reliance on Internet media for election news across all four age groups polled reveals a surprisingly complex dynamic. It’s not as simple as ‘young = Internet, old = TV’.

• Across all four age groups, news organization web sites are the most heavily relied upon.
• Those under 45 are more likely to rely on ISP news pages than those 45 and older.

• There is no age difference in likelihood of relying on candidate email, political web sites and local TV web sites.

• The largest age differences are in reliance on YouTube and social networking sites, which skew strongly young, but have fairly low penetration even among 18-29 year olds (less than 1 in 5).