• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 21, 2016

Voters with specific political leanings have strong attachments to big consumers brands -- but many of the top brands continue not to be media brands.

Only two of the top 10 consumers media brands got high marks from Democratic-leaning voters -- YouTube (a 49.6 index, according to YouGov Brand Index) and Netflix (46.7 index). Republicans-minded voters didn’t have any media companies in the top ten. (Independent voters had one: YouTube, in ninth place)

Highest overall numbers for Democratic-leaning voters went to  Amazon -- a 61.5 index according to YouGov Brand Index. Republicans? It’s Band-Aid. That consumer brand had a 64.4 index score.

Research like this has a lot of crossover. Six of the top brands -- Amazon, Clorox, Band-Aid, Dawn, Cheerios, Craftsman -- were on both Democrats and Republicans top 10 brand indexes.

YouGov BrandIndex’s Index score ranges from 100 to negative 100 compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.

For Republicans, Fox News Channel has been a major top perceived brand -- two years ago ranking in 10th place. But last year, it slipped to 15th place. This year, it’s in 50th place. Did some of those personnel scandals and Fox News Channel Chairman Roger Ailes’ departure send viewers fleeing?

Still, Fox News Channel is a strong TV news network. For example, it beat all TV networks in total Nielsen viewers in the third presidential debate with 11.3 million viewers -- well above CNN (8.7 million) and MSNBC (5.5 million).

Overall, this political season has seen soaring growth for all TV networks. In prime time for the third quarter, Fox News Channel was up 25% to 2.4 million Nielsen viewers versus the same period a year ago; MSNBC, grew 96% to 1.224 million; and CNN, growing 49%, to 1.216 million.

Now try to evaluate this data to that of national election/presidential voters. Last time around -- 2012 -- this came to 129.2 million -- 55% of all potential 235.2 million voters.

All to wonder what TV news channels brands’ value will be after the elections are over -- and how any associations with those networks, and other media brands, will change.