Where there's smoke, people care

The weather app describes today's weather in Chicago as "smokey." Air quality warnings are abounding. Turns out this is an issue that is setting a new bar in the upper right know/care box of our Care-o-Meter. Here's what else we saw this week:

In this wave’s Care-o-Meter, we can compare Trump’s legal woes with each other and with Hunter Biden’s; we can compare various people running for the Republican nomination for 2024; and we find a new leader for the most-cared-about thing since we began this project.

·??????People both know and care more about former President Trump being indicted on federal charges than they did about a civil jury finding that he sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll. Both Democrats and Republicans care equally about this.

·??????Hunter Biden’s guilty plea broke right before we fielded this wave, which could count for slightly lower awareness, but also overall people don’t really care. Republicans do care more (and are twice as likely to care “a lot” than Democrats).

·??????People REALLY care about the smoke from Canadian wildfires that has been drifting over much of the U.S. With 83% of people saying they care about wildfire smoke, it is the most-cared-about thing we have asked about yet.

·??????The levels of not-knowing or caring about three new formal entrants in the GOP race for 2024 –?Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie?–?vary slightly, but they are all below the halfway line. Republicans most cared about DeSantis and cared more than Democrats about his entry and Pence’s. Interestingly, Democrats care more about Christie entering the race than Republicans did, perhaps owing to his frequent criticism of Trump or former governorship of a reliably blue state.

·??????The?Washingtonian?and one of our colleagues in Public Affairs each asked recently why people don’t know as much about positive economic news. Of which there is a lot.?

People were much more likely to KNOW about a very recent news announcement like the Federal Reserve raising interest rates (we asked a couple waves ago) or even the failure of First Republic Bank than they were to know about longer-term positives like low unemployment or the fact that inflation is now at its lowest point in two years. But they CARE a lot about those things. Were I a political strategist or comms person, I might be looking at that…

·??????People neither know about nor care about the proposed merger of golf behemoth PGA and upstart LIV tour.?

·??????People generally don’t care about Pat Sajak announcing his retirement after a 41-year spin as the host of Wheel of Fortune. (But I do. Happy trails, Pat!)?