Losing the engaged without winning the disengaged: Personalism and the choice of political news

When political news centers on the policy work or private lives of individual politicians rather than on parties, it can obscure the collective actors citizens must judge at elections. The usual defense is that such personalism attracts readers, especially those otherwise unlikely to choose political news. We test this claim in survey experiments in Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States ( N = 3039). Respondents chose between an entertainment article and a political article whose subheadline attributed a new bill to a party, an individual politician (individualized), or the politician’s personal story (privatized). Personalism recruited no readers. Effects are negative in all countries and pooled amount to a significant five percentage point loss. The losses were concentrated among politically engaged citizens, while the least engaged, the very readers personalism is meant to attract, were unmoved. Party-centered news thus entail no audience sacrifice as citizens prefer the format that keeps parties visible.