Why Harris and Trump are hitting the celebrity podcast circuit

With just weeks to go until Americans head to the polls in the November election, both former President Trump and Vice President Harris are ramping up efforts to woo new, young, undecided voters who largely eschew traditional media in the final stretch of their campaigns.

For Harris, recent media appearances have included the vastly popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast hosted by Alex Cooper, along with “All the Smoke,” hosted by two former NBA stars. 

Meanwhile, her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will soon appear on “SmartLess,” hosted by Hollywood actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. 

Trump, for his part, has launched a blitz of appearances largely aimed at younger male audiences, including on “All In,” the “Lex Fridman Podcast” and shows hosted by comedian Theo Von and social media influencer Logan Paul.

Now, Harris is reportedly flirting with the idea of appearing on “The Joe Rogan Experience” — one of the most widely listened to podcasts in the world — in a bid to reach his predominantly male audience. 

Samuel Woolley, affiliate faculty fellow at the Center for Media Engagement, said that presidential campaigns and candidates have realized that in order to reach those tough-to-reach independent voters, they’ve got to turn to different forms of media.

“Oftentimes they’re not tuning in to NBC or Fox. Those people are listening to specific podcasts that cater to their interests. We’re not talking about small podcasts. We’re talking about podcasts that have millions of listeners,” he told The Hill. 

“The Joe Rogan Experience” boasts the most U.S. podcast listeners, according to media research firm Edison Research. “Call Her Daddy” is ranked seventh, while “SmartLess” comes in eighth. Trump recently also made an appearance on “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the 13th-ranking podcast among U.S. listeners, according to Edison.

Some observers have framed Harris and Trump’s push into the podcast space at this stage in the election as a sign of concern about reaching parts of the electorate they think might be unheard, difficult to reach or could be convinced to support them.

“The presidential campaigns are often eyeing one another to see who’s going to take the leap to do something new in the media first. We saw Harris getting on TikTok and spending a lot of time there. And then suddenly, we saw more of Trump, his campaign and for his surrogates there,” Woolley said.

Harris’s appearance on “Call Her Daddy” was also strategic, Woolley added: Cooper’s audience is 70 percent women, while more than three-quarters are under the age of 35 and 93 percent of listeners are under age 45.

These podcasts also give a better sense of what the candidates are like as individuals, said Shannon C. McGregor, an associate journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“It gives listeners a better sense of what the candidates are like than the CNN interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, especially for people who aren’t super interested in politics.”

People who listen to those podcasts also have a “parasocial” relationship with the host, McGregor added.

“They feel like they know that person because they listen to them in this pretty intimate format on a weekly basis or even more often,” McGregor explained. 

“I think candidates are also hoping to play off of that relationship that people have with these podcasters that they listen to, and try and get a little spillover effect from that.”

The podcast media blitz comes as early voting has already begun in several states, including key battlegrounds such as Arizona and Georgia. Recent polling also shows that Harris and Trump are in an extremely close battle to the finish line. 

Harris is leading Trump by 2.9 percentage points in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ aggregate of more than 250 polls.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found Harris leading Trump by close to a 1.5 percentage points among registered voters when respondents were asked whom they would choose for president if the election were held today between the two. Harris received close to 48 percent support, while Trump received more than 46 percent. 

GOP strategist Doug Heye told The Hill that there’s been a proliferation of podcasts with vast numbers of listeners, making them a natural target for politicians eager to make deep connections with audiences.

“You don’t go on Joe Rogan for 30 minutes. You’re there for a long time,” Heye said.

“It’s a great way to reach a very large audience,” he said, but warned it “could backfire if something goes wrong, and that’s a challenge for either one of the candidates.”

The Harris campaign wants to leave no communication outlet unconsidered, and it wants to try them all, Tobe Berkovitz, associate professor of advertising at Boston University, told The Hill.

“They started with outlets that are friendly to the liberals. Now Harris is moving to a wide variety, including going on with Bret Baier, and so podcasts make a lot of sense, because that’s another audience. It’s an audience you might not reach with all these other channels. So I think they’re desperate to reach any potential movable voter,” Berkovitz said. 

Heye argued that Walz ramping down his media appearances strategically has been a mistake from the Harris campaign. 

“They should be ramping up having people out there as much as possible. But again, you’ve got to try and hit not just your base to rally them, but those voters who are going to get you over the edge,” Heye said. 

Despite criticism Harris’s campaign has faced for not getting the vice president out on the media circuit, Berkovitz believes that this media blitz is not “a little too late.”

“Right now, you have to start any last-minute communication because of early voting. Mail-in voting, there are so many ways that a ballot could be cast before Election Day, and so this is the time right now you have to try to reach people who aren’t going to wait for Election Day to vote again. The strength of podcasts is, you’re reaching a unique audience. It’s a very tight group that listens to any particular podcast in terms of their politics,” he added. 

For Trump or Harris, if they want to connect with large groups of people, going to the most prominent podcast in the globe is the obvious strategy, according to Heye. 

Figures reported by Bloomberg showed in March that Rogan’s show had a total of 14.5 million followers on Spotify. And his follower base is largely male, a demographic with which Harris is struggling to make gains.

Heye told The Hill that Harris is not going to win this race by staying in her comfort zone, and “most of what we’ve seen her do in the media is her comfort zone” so far.

“The Trump campaign isn’t as concerned as the Harris campaign, regardless of what you know happened at that rally,” Heye said, referring to Trump’s decision to cut off questioning at a Monday town hall and instead play music for his supporters, swaying on stage for more than half an hour before wrapping the event.

Trump is “not necessarily trying to win over new voters in the way that Harris is,” Heye said.