No Second Take. Podcasts in the 2026 Midterms

Two years ago, commentators led by NYU's Scott Galloway, followed by media outlets from CNN to Fox News, proclaimed the birth of the “podcast election.” Back then, the right built its win among young men on conversations in exactly these studios. Today it is not going back, while Talarico became known to a broad audience thanks to his conversation with Rogan back in 2025.

Americans will elect the entire House of Representatives, one third of the Senate and many governors. This piece looks at the role podcasts played in this campaign, what research says about their influence, and why they turned out to matter less than predicted.

2024: when the microphone replaced the rally

In the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump appeared on more than a dozen podcasts aimed at young men. The most important was a nearly three-hour episode with Joe Rogan, host of the most popular podcast in the US. According to Edison Research, 80% of Rogan's listeners are men, and 51% of them are between 18 and 34. Just before the election, 54% of his weekly listeners leaned toward Trump and 26% toward Kamala Harris.

According to NBC News exit polls, Trump won men under 30 by 2 points over Kamala Harris, whereas in 2020 Joe Biden beat him in this group by 11 points. A breakdown by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney paints a similar picture: 49% for Trump versus 47% for Harris in 2024, and 52% for Biden versus 41% for Trump in 2020. After the election, NYU professor Scott Galloway wrote that the political power of podcasts was only beginning to be felt. In America, that diagnosis became almost dogma.

Researchers tried to measure this influence. A team from the University of Sydney estimated that the podcast strategy gave Trump between 1 and 2.6 percentage points of support, more than half of which he owed to Rogan. Another study, reported by PsyPost, found that listening to Rogan was a stronger predictor of a Trump vote than watching Fox News. The authors caution, however, that correlation does not prove that a podcast changed anyone's vote.

2026: studios nobody goes back to

In the campaign ahead of this year's midterms, Trump has not appeared with Rogan, Theo Von, Andrew Schulz or the Nelk Boys, Forbes reports. Vice President JD Vance visited Rogan in July, but otherwise he too is steering clear of this circuit. This year Rogan hosted two Republican candidates, Tim Burchett and Steve Hilton, both in races considered already decided.

Commentator Mark Halperin called this absence a puzzle and asked on his show 2WAY, as quoted by CNN: “Why aren't the president and vice president on Rogan?” He suggested the answer himself: the mood in those studios may no longer be as friendly as it was two years ago.

That is a euphemism. Rogan criticizes the war with Iran and ICE operations, and in April he called himself “politically homeless.” In an October conversation with actor Michael Douglas he said, as Yahoo News reports: “Some of the things Trump stood for turned out not to be true.” Andrew Schulz, host of the Flagrant podcast, says openly that he regrets voting for Trump.

The shift shows up in the data, too. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis covering 70,000 hours of recordings, mentions of Trump on conservative podcasts fell by 70% compared with the period before the 2024 election. On left-leaning podcasts they stayed at a similar level.

The hosts themselves have also become less popular. A poll by the Democratic project Speaking With American Men, covered by Axios, shows that young men's favorability toward Rogan fell by 11 points, and toward Tucker Carlson by 12. An independent Cygnal survey indicates that men aged 18–30 view Trump, Vance and the Republican Party unfavorably.

James Talarico: a candidate born in Rogan's studio

The most tangible effect of podcasts in this campaign is a single political career that began in Rogan's studio. In July 2025, Rogan invited little-known Texas state representative James Talarico, a Democrat and seminary student. They talked for more than two and a half hours, mostly about faith and politics.

At the end, Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, told his guest, as Mediaite reports: “You need to run for president.” Talarico replied that change would come from the listeners, not from him. A month and a half later he announced a run for the Senate.

In March 2026, Talarico won the Democratic primary. Joshua Blank of the University of Texas at Austin said that it was largely this episode that propelled him into the race. His opponent is Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The fight for the Texas Senate seat is the most expensive campaign in US history outside of presidential elections: more than $560 million has been spent or reserved on ads. Rogan, however, has no intention of campaigning for his former guest. In one episode he said outright that he does not want Democrats running Texas.

The regulator as YouTube's accidental promoter

In the campaign ahead of this year's midterms, candidate interviews also moved online for legal reasons. In January 2026, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggested that TV stations could be required to invite all rivals of a candidate who appeared on an entertainment program or talk show. Until then, such programs, like news programs, had been exempt from this obligation. The obligation stems from the so-called equal time rule: a broadcast station that gives airtime to one candidate must offer the same amount of time to that candidate's competitors.

The first candidate affected was Talarico himself. In February, ahead of the Texas primary, CBS dropped his interview from Stephen Colbert's late-night show. The network's lawyers feared it would then have to give airtime to his primary rivals as well. So Colbert published the interview on YouTube, which the equal time rule does not cover, and the video was viewed 7.5 million times.

As the Washington Examiner notes, the equal time rule applies only to broadcasters using the public airwaves. It does not apply to Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, podcasts or cable TV. So a rule from the 1930s ended up acting as an incentive to move political conversations to where the audience was already moving anyway.

Democrats: plenty of conversations, no breakthrough

After their 2024 defeat, Democrats began visiting studios they had previously avoided. Pete Buttigieg spent more than two hours on Flagrant, and Zohran Mamdani, who went on to win the New York City mayoral race, also appeared on the podcast, as NBC News reports.

In the midterms, however, Democrats relied mainly on their own circuit. According to CNN, most Senate candidates in states where the outcome traditionally remains uncertain until the last minute (the so-called “swing states”) appeared on Pod Save America this year, some of them several times. Within a single month, Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed was on with Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein and Pod Save, while his Republican opponent Mike Rogers consistently stuck to local media and television.

Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America, explains this as a difference in scale. Candidates in statewide races need a different strategy than presidential candidates, and their target voters get their information from different sources. Hence the growing role of local shows: in Iowa, both Senate candidates, Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek, appeared on the statewide program River to River, broadcast simultaneously as radio and a podcast.

How much it really matters

The most serious study of the subject cools things down. In September 2026, researchers from the NYU Center for Social Media, AI and Politics published a preprint based on an analysis of 36,659 episodes from 2024 and two sets of survey data. The conclusion: podcasts explain only a small part of the growing gap between how young women and young men vote.

The authors introduce the concept of “gendered media spaces.” What people listen to is driven by interests such as sports or comedy, not by political views. As a result, men and women encounter markedly different political messages, and they do so incidentally: on podcasts that are not political in themselves. So a podcast does not persuade directly; rather, it builds an environment in which certain views sound natural.

For scale, it is worth comparing podcasts with advertising. Spending on political ads ahead of this year's midterms reached a record $11.21 billion, more than during the entire 2024 presidential campaign. Political advertising researcher Erika Franklin Fowler tells CBS News that ads do little to change voters' views. So neither money nor the microphone turns out to be a lever that moves the result on its own.

The podcast as a springboard, not a lever

This year's midterms show that a podcast appearance does not guarantee a candidate victory. It can, however, be a springboard: a single conversation with Rogan gave James Talarico national name recognition. But a host's support is not granted forever, because the host's views change too: Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, is now among his critics.

Podcast hosts and commentators

• Joe Rogan is a comedian and UFC commentator, and host of The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US. He endorsed Trump in 2024 and in 2026 is one of his vocal critics.
• Theo Von is a comedian and host of the podcast This Past Weekend. He hosted Trump in 2024 and now criticizes, among other things, the war with Iran.
• Andrew Schulz is a comedian and co-host of the podcast Flagrant. He hosted Trump in 2024 and later publicly regretted voting for him.
• Tucker Carlson is a former Fox News star and now an independent podcaster. His declining popularity among young men shows that the crisis affects the entire right-wing podcast circuit.
• Mark Halperin is a political journalist who hosts the online show 2WAY. He publicly pointed out that Trump gave up podcast appearances in 2026.
• Scott Galloway is a marketing professor at New York University (NYU) and a popular podcaster. After the 2024 election he declared that the political power of podcasts was only beginning to be felt.
• Dan Pfeiffer is a former adviser to Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save America, the most important podcast of the liberal circuit. In 2026, most Democratic Senate candidates from swing states appeared on it.
• Stephen Colbert is the host of the late-night program The Late Show on CBS. He published on YouTube an interview with James Talarico that the network did not air.

Politicians

• Donald Trump is the President of the United States. In 2024 he appeared on more than a dozen podcasts, and in the campaign ahead of the 2026 midterms he is avoiding the studios that helped him win.
• JD Vance is the Vice President of the United States. In July 2026 he appeared on Joe Rogan's show, where Rogan asked him about, among other things, the war with Iran and the Epstein files.
• James Talarico is the Democratic Senate candidate from Texas and a former member of the Texas state legislature. His national name recognition came from a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience in July 2025.
• Ken Paxton is the Attorney General of Texas and Talarico's Republican opponent in the Senate race.
• Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan who made extensive use of podcasts in his campaign.
• Mike Rogers is El-Sayed's Republican opponent and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In his campaign he relied on local media and television.
• Tim Burchett and Steve Hilton are the only Republican candidates in this year's elections whom Rogan has hosted. Both are running in races where the outcome is considered a foregone conclusion.
• Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek are Senate candidates from Iowa. Both appeared on the statewide program River to River, broadcast as a radio show and a podcast.
• Pete Buttigieg and Zohran Mamdani are Democrats who, after the party's 2024 defeat, were among the first to appear on manosphere podcasts.

Institutions and researchers

• FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is the US media regulator. In 2026 its chairman Brendan Carr announced that the equal time rule could also cover talk shows.
• Edison Research is an American research firm and the main source of podcast audience data in the US.
• NYU Center for Social Media, AI and Politics is a New York University research center and the author of the most comprehensive analysis of podcasts' influence on the 2024 election.
• University of Sydney is an Australian university whose researchers estimated how many percentage points of support the podcast strategy gave Trump.
• Wall Street Journal is an American daily that analyzed 70,000 hours of podcasts and measured the drop in mentions of Trump.
• AdImpact is a firm that tracks political ad spending and the source of the data on the record $11.21 billion spent ahead of the 2026 elections.
• Cygnal is a Republican polling firm and the author of the Young American Men Survey 2026.
• Speaking With American Men is a Democratic-aligned research project that tracks the attitudes of young men. Its results are worth reading with that in mind.
• Erika Franklin Fowler is a professor at Wesleyan University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which has studied political advertising for years.
• Joshua Blank is research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sources used in this article

• CNN, “Joe Rogan defined the 2024 ‘podcast election.’ But 2026 is a different story”, 28 Oct 2026 – link. Source of the Halperin and Pfeiffer quotes.
• CNN, Reliable Sources newsletter, 28 Oct 2026 – link. Data on Pod Save America and El-Sayed.
• Axios, “The manosphere stars who helped Trump win are losing their shine”, 20 Oct 2026 – link. Polls of young men, the NYU study.
• Texas Observer, “Does Joe Rogan Care Who Wins the Texas Senate Race?”, 22 Sep 2026 – link. An analysis of 20 Rogan episodes on Talarico and Paxton; material for expanding the Texas section.
• Wall Street Journal, analysis of 70,000 hours of conservative podcasts, September 2026 – link. Paywalled; data known from Forbes's coverage.
• Puck, report on podcasters' declining popularity among young men, October 2026. No link; covered by Axios and Yahoo News.
• Bloomberg (Ted Mann), piece on Rogan's “doubts” about Trump, October 2026. No link; quoted by CNN.
• Forbes, “Trump Bails On 2024 Manosphere Podcast Strategy For Midterms”, 28 Oct 2026 – link. The best single source; includes links to JRE episodes.
• APSA Preprints / NYU CSMaP, “Did Podcasts Help Trump Win Young Men? Gendered Media Spaces and Gender Gaps”, 3 Sep 2026 – link. The full PDF is worth reading.
• Yahoo News, “Young Men Are Abandoning the Podcasters Who Got Trump Elected”, October 2026 – link. Rogan's quote from the conversation with Douglas.
• PsyPost, “Listening to Joe Rogan was a stronger predictor of a Trump vote than watching Fox News”, 2026 – link.
• University of Sydney, “Podcasts sway many young men to the right”, 3 Feb 2025 – link.
• Edison Research, “Who Joe Rogan Listeners are Likely to Support in the Election”, 2024 – link.
• Mediaite, “Joe Rogan Urges Texas Progressive, ‘You Need to Run For President’”, July 2025 – link.
• Mediaite, “Joe Rogan Says He Loves Living in Blue Austin As Long As It’s Surrounded By Texas Red”, 2026 – link.
• WAFB / Gray DC, “Talarico wins TX Dem Senate primary; GOP heads to runoff”, 4 Mar 2026 – link.
• WTOP / AP, “What to know about the ‘equal time’ rule…”, February 2026 – link.
• Washington Times, piece on the equal time rule and the 7.5 million views, 19 Feb 2026 – link.
• Washington Examiner, “Left-wing late night and the law…”, 2026 – link.
• NBC News, “Democrats dip into the ‘manosphere’ in search of the key to the young male vote”, 2025 – link.
• TheWrap, “Midterm Political Ad Spending Hits Record $11.21 Billion”, October 2026 – link.
• Gray DC / Fox 8, “2026 midterms set new record for political ad spending”, 29 Oct 2026 – link.
• CBS News, “Midterm elections preview: How might this year's vote change Washington?”, 2 Nov 2026 – link.