Cable news is the most commonly-viewed source of news of the Republican primary, says the Pew Research Center.

In findings released Feb. 7 of a poll conducted Jan. 4-8 among 1,507 adults (with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points) Pew says 36 percent of Americans say they regularly learn about candidates or the campaign on cable news networks. That percentage has remained nearly steady since 2000, but other sources of information have drastically declined in popularity.

Even the Internet, which has shot up as a regular information source from 9 percent of the populace in 2000 to a quarter of the populace in 2012, has stayed stagnant in popularity relative to 2008, when 24 percent of the populace used it as a regular source of campaign news.

Pew researchers say that's largely due to the lack of interest so far in the campaign among younger Americans--the most voracious of Internet news consumers, and also "less apt to be Republicans."

Facebook and Twitter are having a less than broad impact on campaign awareness, Pew says. Only 6 percent say they regularly get campaign information from Facebook and 2 percent say they get it regularly from Twitter. Another 14 percent say they sometimes get campaign information from Facebook and another 3 percent say they sometimes get it from Twitter.

However, 72 percent of registered voters say they've seen or heard campaign commercials.

"That is far more than the percentages saying they have received email from a campaign or political group (16 percent), visited a candidate's website (15 percent) or followed a candidate's updates on Twitter or Facebook (6 percent)," Pew says.

For more:
- download the Pew Research Center report, "Cable Leads the Pack as Campaign News Source" (.pdf)

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