To maintain some minimal legitimacy in the eyes of the public, the United States’ two-party system relies, in part, on the popular belief that at least one of the parties champions the interests of the poor. And in recent years, this point has often been litigated indirectly with arguments over who watches various cable news channels, given their obvious partisan alignments.

The Fox News Channel (FNC) seems to have been winning that argument lately. In part, this is simply because people are credulously buying its Real America branding as the preferred news source for rural America, flyover states, and so on. In part, it’s because this fits so well into the “Party of the Working Class” talking point the GOP has advanced with renewed vigor in the post-Trump era. And in part, I think, it’s because of a widely circulated article that reportedly showed a disproportionate preference for Fox News (even though the article actually claims this preference is negligible).

I’ve been suspicious about this talking point for a while now, so I recently got around to looking at the data itself. Here’s what I found.