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Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump’s podcast appearances may not be having the impact their camps are hoping for.
An exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that a majority of respondents had not listened to the podcasts, which have played a significant role in both campaigns. The poll asked 1,000 likely voters if they had seen Harris on podcasts such as “Call Her Daddy” or “All the Smoke,” as well as if they had seen Trump on “This Past Weekend with Theo Von” or “Flagrant 2.”
Nearly 72% of respondents said that they had not seen Harris on a podcast and 77.5% said that they had not seen a Trump podcast appearance.
Harris began her home stretch media blitz earlier this month with a high-profile appearance on “Call Her Daddy” centered around women’s health issues, including abortion.
Non-traditional media appearances have been a constant for the Trump campaign, having appeared on the “Impaulsive” podcast in June and on far-right Kick streamer Adin Ross’ channel in August, amongst other “bro” oriented podcasts.
The poll findings were released a day after Politico reported that Trump will record an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” on Friday. Reuters has also reported that the Harris campaign has been in negotiations to appear on the tentpole podcast.
Podcast views change views in limited audience
Of the respondents that said they had seen a Harris podcast appearance:
- 51% said that what they saw made them less likely to vote for the vice president
- 34% said that what they saw made them more likely to vote for the vice president
- 13% said that what they saw made no difference to their vote
For those who said that they had seen a Trump podcast appearance:
- 49.5% said that what they saw made them more likely to vote for the former president
- 28% said that what they saw made them less likely to vote for the former president
- 21.5 % said that what they saw made no difference to their vote
Podcasts still emerging as part of campaign strategy
Podcast appearances offer campaigns a way to reach potential voters who have turned off traditional media, despite the small reach found in the poll.
Lillana Forteir, a history teacher and Democrat in California who responded to the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll, said in an interview with USA TODAY that she stopped watching CNN when she found that the network was not asking hard questions of Trump campaign surrogates. She told pollsters that she had consumed podcast appearances from both candidates and is voting for Harris.
Fortier said that podcasts and other alternative media serve her need for greater depth in political coverage.
“They are actually putting themselves in that position because there’s an open space between corporate news (and alternative news),” Fortier said. “There is a difference between what people on NBC are allowed to say compared to The Young Turks. They can be more open about it. They can tell more of the story, more of the context of what happened.”
Paul Giampetroni, a Michigan Republican who is voting for Trump and responded to the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll, told USA TODAY that his usual podcast rotation includes “The Charlie Kirk Show” and the longform podcast “Whatever,” but sought out appearances by the candidates on “Impaulsive” and “Call Her Daddy.”
He says he thinks the true future of the electoral battleground is social media.
“As the culture and society in the United States starts to shift a little bit more, I think that there will be a bigger move to social media as a primary place of consumption for news,” Giampetroni said. “I have kids in a wide age range, from 15 to 29, and they all consume everything off of social media. Everything from Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, that’s where they get a lot of their information from.”
