At best, only one third of Americans pay close attention to politics. In a recent Marquette Law School poll, just 36 percent of respondents said they follow politics most of the time. Using different wording, a Grinnell College-Selzer poll from March found that 28 percent of Americans say they pay a lot of attention to political news.

There’s reason to think these numbers might be too high—that the actual proportion of Americans paying close attention to politics is lower. …

When it comes to paying attention to presidential campaigns, there is even more reason to think we dramatically overestimate how invested people are. Pew Research has asked respondents how much thought they have given to the candidates running for president in the lead-up to the last several presidential elections. In the summer of 2019, barely a quarter had given the candidates much thought. The figures were similar in mid-2015.

[That’s why calculating political progress on social media platforms is a fool’s errand. Twitter and even Facebook are not representative of the electorate as a whole. Neither are those who routinely listen to “top down” messaging, even on TV. The best way to campaign is to take campaigns to the front doors of voters and engage them personally and directly. And yet neither party has learned that lesson, not even after Barack Obama made it clear just how powerful that is. In this cycle, only Ron DeSantis has put serious investment in such a strategy. — Ed]