watch news at all and still "believe" what they wanted about their chosen leaders and party, despite any facts.
Yes, there is no doubt a percentage of the FOX viewers who would watch regular nightly news instead (if FOX didn't exist) and be a little better informed, and some would no longer be Republican voters as a result.
FOX caters mostly (not entirely but mostly) to a crowd that knows what it wants to hear. It does serve a very important function in reinforcing the beliefs of those people, and no doubt recruiting some new Republican voters through watching it. But it's fantasy to think that most of this 30-35 percent would be Democrats or not vote Republican if they didn't watch FOX. The majority, in my opinion, would still be Republicans, because they seek out FOX because they ARE Republicans rather than the other way around.
The importance of FOX in reinforcing right wing belief systems and keeping Republicans "in the fold" cannot be overestimated IMHO. I constantly see DU posts harping on how small the FOX/cable news ratings are compared with network, but I'm not buying. Somehow the metrics used in the standard ratings system is not capturing the influence of cable news. I work among people who are overwhelmingly well off Republicans. The huge majority of these folks all watch FOX news, and that shite is constantly on in the work lounges almost everywhere I go. These are professional people with postgraduate level education for the most part, intelligent people who ought to know better but want to be reinforced in their faith in the party that keeps their tax situation comfortable (some are Bible thumpers too, here). The influence of FOX is way more than some 2 percent viewership or whatever would reflect.
I wonder if the ratings only reflect what's happening during evening news time, rather than cumulative viewership over the day, where the FOXers tend to leave their TVs tuned to it for hours on end.