To get a sense of how Pennsylvania voters got their news and information about the state’s primary, I did spot interviews with twenty or so voters outside of three polling places in very different communities.
I started the morning in Levittown, a suburb just north of Philadelphia in Bucks County. Michael Sokolove, who grew up there, recently profiled the town for The New York Times Magazine. And I found plenty of Times readers…the Bucks County Courier Times, that is.
“They did a nice election section this morning,” said William Litz, who, with his wife Mary, was leaving his polling station at a county office building.
Yes, others in the overwhelmingly white—and aged—crowd mentioned local television, and occasionally cable news or The Philadelphia Inquirer as news sources. But the voters named their local paper as their foremost source of news.
Most voters were not pleased with last week’s debate on ABC. Ellen George, seventy-five and a Clinton supporter, complained that the debate “muddied the choice for us” and wasted time on trivial issues.
“Just like with his pastor there. They spent too much time. Just move on,” she said. “Be done with it!”
About seventeen miles away, that sentiment was echoed by voters outside the Grace Temple Baptist Church, located in West Oak Lane, a predominately black neighborhood in northern Philadelphia.
“The media, they basically have the stories they want to talk about,” said Barbara Jones, a private security guard who voted for Obama. “The debate really put it in for me,” mostly because she thought her candidate was unflappable through the onslaught.
Derrick Wilkerson, a forty-four-year-old barber, complained that the debate moderators spent so much time on Reverend Wright. “I want it to be about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton,” he said.
Every voter exiting the church was black. Most had watched the ABC debate, and cited local TV and newspapers, including the tabloid Daily News, as their major sources for election news. None mentioned the Philadelphia Tribune, the city’s African American-owned paper, which is published three times a week.
But Robert Crowder, fifty-two and a manager at SEPTA, the region’s public transportation agency, singled out WURD, an AM station serving the city’s large black population. “It’s informative, it’s grassroots. It talks to people I know, and to issues I care about.”
In Tacony, a hardscrabble, mostly white neighborhood in the city’s northeast section, people were casting votes inside a small, brick recreation center that sat alongside a basketball court, a playground, and a grassy field. All three were getting ample use, as Philly public schools were closed for election day.
Pat Mitchell, who was keeping her eye on her granddaughter while her daughter voted, cited the Northeast Times, a neighborhood paper, as a good source of election information, especially for the down ballot races.
Hector Rivera was clearly pleased with all the research he’d done on the candidates, using the Internet and spending time with CNN and local television. “I watch all of it,” said the thirty-seven-year-old brick layer. “I’m trying to get as much information as I can. Doing your homework doesn’t hurt.”
I asked him what he’d learned. He mentioned how Clinton’s landing “in Iraq” was not what she said it was. I decided not to tell him that he had the wrong war, and Rivera plowed ahead, speaking vaguely about Obama’s father and stepfather. And then:
“When he was sworn in to the senate, he did it on the Koran, not the proper bible.”
I asked him where he’d read that.
“Human Events,” he said. “Someone e-mailed it to me.”
I told him that wasn’t true, that it was just a rumor.
“It’s a rumor? Then that’s not right for people to say.”
Anthony Tomaino, eighty-two and a retired bricklayer, had kind things to say about local television and the Inquirer. “The only thing I don’t like to read about is the superdelegates,” he said, noting that he learned about the party leaders who get automatic convention votes for the first time this year. “You read about them, and you realize that what you do here can be ignored!”
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.