From Joe Rogan to Call Her Daddy, the new election campaign stop might be podcasts

Open this photo in gallery:

In the waning days of the U.S. presidential campaign, Donald Trump made an odd detour to Texas, a state he will likely win whether he makes appearances there or not, to record a nearly three-hour interview with The Joe Rogan Experience, America’s most listened-to podcast.

Mr. Trump repeated debunked claims of election fraud, pondered the possibility of life on Mars and discussed his love of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Four days after the episode was posted, it had more than 40 million views on YouTube.

Democratic rival Kamala Harris is also using podcasts to shore up support among her base. Ms. Harris has appeared on Alex Cooper’s sex-positive podcast Call Her Daddy (popular with Gen Z women), the sports podcast All The Smoke (young Black men) and vulnerability expert Brené Brown’s therapy-speak-filled Unlocking Us (suburban white women). Her running mate, Tim Walz, has embedded himself with niche influencers and communities on TikTok and Twitch.

The Rogan interview, Call Her Daddy and others underscore the prominence podcasters, YouTubers, streamers and social media stars have assumed in this election. The presidential campaigns, trying to break a months-long polling deadlock, have increasingly turned to these online influencers as gateways to very specific segments of potential voters they are unlikely to reach through cable news or rallies.

Both campaigns are trying to reach a tiny sliver of Americans who are considered low-propensity voters – meaning they have voted infrequently in the past, or not at all – and the even smaller number of voters who are still undecided. Campaign strategists believe influencers on podcasts, YouTube or TikTok are the way to reach them, a recognition that buying ads on social media may not be enough.

“Four years ago, Snapchat was the new shiny object where everybody wanted to spend ad money. ‘This is where the kids are. Here’s where you got to go,’ ” said Tyler Brown, former director of digital strategy at the Republican National Committee. “This time there’s not a particular platform or app. It’s an understanding that independent content creators, regardless of the platform, have tremendous value in this fragmented ecosystem.”

Open this photo in gallery:

Mr. Trump has been tapping into the manosphere, a collection of online spaces with a devoted following of young men – a demographic that has been shifting Republican, according to polls, but that historically has had low voter turnout. Mr. Trump has recorded interviews with podcasters, including Theo Von and Andrew Schulz; YouTubers, such as the Nelk Boys and Logan and Jake Paul; and streamer Adin Ross, who has hosted livestreams with Nick Fuentes, the far-right commentator known for his white supremacist views.

In August, Mr. Ross gifted Mr. Trump a Tesla Cybertruck wrapped in the ubiquitous photo of the former president raising a defiant fist after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pa.

Mr. Trump has cultivated a years-long relationship with the Nelk Boys, a Canadian-American group of digital content creators who rose to fame filming prank videos and frat-style parties for YouTube. The Nelk Boys have filmed TikTok videos with the former president on his private jet and launched a multimillion-dollar voter registration push with the goal of turning out young men.

“Trump and his campaign knew that young white males were up for grabs, but the question was how to get them. Trump can’t go on Fox News and reach the guys who watch Nelk,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, who was the deputy campaign manager for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2020. Mr. Sanders, who was twice unsuccessful at securing the Democratic presidential nomination and is now running for re-election in the Senate, was known for his dedicated online following. He appeared on Mr. Rogan’s podcast in 2019. JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s running mate, was on Mr. Rogan’s podcast on Wednesday.

Mr. Rabin-Havt said that Nelk followers aren’t watching the videos for politics. “They’re watching because they like to see these guys party and pull pranks and do crazy stuff. The people who are tuning into Nelk are culturally aligned, and that’s the key.”

Open this photo in gallery:

For Ms. Harris, meanwhile, Call Her Daddy, the fifth most popular podcast in the United States on Spotify, offered a way of speaking directly to Gen Z women, including some who lean conservative, about her pledge to restore federal abortion rights. The issue is seen as a liability for Mr. Trump, whose Supreme Court appointees struck down those rights in 2022.

While traditional media is bound by print space, commercial breaks and primetime show lengths, podcasting offers more flexibility. Some of the most popular podcasts, such as The Joe Rogan Experience and the Lex Fridman Podcast – which has played host to both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders during this campaign cycle – routinely surpass the three-hour mark. The hosts are often congenial and curious, forgoing rigorous fact checking.

“The benefits to these long-form interviews is that they’re not getting spliced up or diced up, they’re not taken out of context, and people are being able to hear from president Trump in not necessarily just a totally softball interview,” Alex Bruesewitz, a senior Trump communications adviser, said in an interview with Semafor.

Mr. Brown, the Republican strategist, said voters are keen to see candidates in less traditional media environments, in part because many distrust the mainstream media – a wariness that Mr. Trump also promotes.

Alan Nguyen, a 48-year-old Joe Rogan listener who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he is a lifelong Democrat and plans to vote for Ms. Harris. But he added that Mr. Trump’s Rogan appearance changed his view of the former president. “The episode definitely made me see Trump as more human again. I liked him during the Apprentice days and hated him during 2016-2020,” Mr. Nguyen said. “He convinced me to not worry or not be angry should he come into office.”

Whether podcasts can move the needle in a closely contested election is still unknown. A poll from USA Today and Suffolk University found that nearly 72 per cent of respondents had not seen Ms. Harris on a podcast and 77.5 per cent had not seen a Trump podcast appearance. Of the respondents who had seen Ms. Harris, 51 per cent said it made them less likely to vote for her. Of those who had seen Trump, 49.5 per cent said they were more likely to vote for him.

As campaigns increasingly embrace online influencers, they are also becoming aware of some of the potential downsides of elevating entertainers who are popular with niche audiences and catapulting them onto national stages. Mr. Trump’s campaign has distanced itself from podcaster and standup comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. During the rally, Mr. Hinchcliffe made jokes at the expense of Latinos, African Americans, Palestinian and Jews.