The Trump and Harris campaigns were heavy on podcasts. Will they make a difference?

More people are listening to podcasts than ever before, and that created a defining media trend in the 2024 presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.
In addition to traditional media appearances, the Democratic and the Republican nominees tapped podcast audiences to reach new voters and shore up support among specific demographic blocs.
In this election cycle, Harris went on Alex Cooper’s popular “Call Her Daddy” show and “All the Smoke” with former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, and was interviewed by Howard Stern and Charlamagne tha God.
Trump delivered a three-hour conversation on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” as did his running mate JD Vance. Trump also went on “Flagrant” with comedians Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.” On Monday, the former president joined Jim Gray and Bill Belichick on their show “Let’s Go!” to gab about sports betting, college athletics and the PGA.
If you’re a regular mainstream evening news viewer and you’ve never heard of most of these shows, that’s kind of the point.
People — especially young folks — are getting less of their news and political information through linear television networks and more of it via digital outlets including social media and podcasts.
This comes as cord-cutting has eroded the traditional media landscape and Americans’ trust in news outlets continues to sour. Comcast Corp. is considering spinning off its NBCUniversal-owned cable channels and Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have taken multi-billion dollar write-downs on their TV businesses. The newspaper industry is in secular decline.
While investment in the podcast business experienced a recent pullback, the audience is growing. A 2024 report by Edison Research found that a record 47% of U.S. individuals aged 12 and older listened to a podcast in the last month, up from 42% last year. According to Pew data, 27% of U.S. adults say they get their news from podcasts at least sometimes, which is up from 22% in 2020.
The key point is not just how many people are listening to podcasts, but who is listening. Podcasts skew young at a time when younger audiences may rarely see political ads on television or interviews on major broadcast or cable news networks. They often listen while doing other things, like folding laundry and washing dishes.
The looser podcast format allows guests to address specific topics and show their personalities in ways that don’t work as well in traditional journalistic interviews, in which the host is expected to pin down politicians on policies and past contradictions. Podcast hosts often don’t even see what they do as interviewing. They’re just having conversations.
Trump’s appearances have focused on energizing young men — the “bro vote” — an audience receptive to his message.
His talk with Rogan spanned North Korea, the UFC, UFOs and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which are areas of interest to the comedian’s largely young male audience. The episode has amassed nearly 45 million views on YouTube. Rogan has millions of subscribers on Spotify, where he has a deal valued at $250 million.
Cooper’s sex and relationships show “Call Her Daddy,” in contrast, reaches a large audience of mostly young women, a key demographic for Harris. Harris’ talk with Cooper focused on reproductive rights, but also allowed the candidate to give listeners a window into her upbringing and background as a prosecutor. Her appearance on “All the Smoke” was aimed at engaging young Black men.
Many of the conversations generated headlines, and not always ones favorable to the guest.
On “Flagrant,” the hosts cracked up laughing when Trump described himself as “basically a truthful person.” A three-hour interview is bound to generate material for supporters and opponents alike, even if the episode is overwhelmingly friendly. Harris’ campaign, for example, tweeted out a clip of Rogan pressing Vance about his stance on abortion restrictions.
Political candidates are not abandoning mainstream media networks, which continue to command a large audience, albeit a shrinking one.
Trump still calls into Fox News. His campaign trail stunts are basically designed to generate TV coverage and viral moments online.
Harris’ contentious interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier scored 7.8 million TV viewers, according to Nielsen. The vice president’s “60 Minutes” interview was watched by 5.7 million while her chat with anchor Dana Bash on CNN alongside running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz drew 6.3 million viewers. Trump canceled his own “60 Minutes” interview and pilloried CBS for its editing of Harris’ answer to a question about Israel.
Over the weekend, Harris appeared in the opening sketch of “Saturday Night Live” with her celebrity doppelganger Maya Rudolph, prompting the Trump team to request equal air time on NBC (which he received).
Will the myriad podcast and media appearances make a difference?
We’ll know more once the election is finished, whether that’s Tuesday or days later. No isolated event seems to have moved the polls substantially since President Biden dropped his reelection bid and made way for Harris. The outcome will come down to turnout and late-deciding voters in a few battleground states.
But as the audience becomes more fragmented and divided along political and demographic lines, this trend is not going away.
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