By Lindsey Devir and Kaleigh Sommers
Who won the election between Call Her Daddy and The Joe Rogan Experience?
Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday would suggest Rogan, but interviews with a dozen Stanford University students indicate that neither podcast made a big difference to them — despite media hype that the chase for young, undecided voters ran through the studios of Spotify’s two enormously popular hosts.
Willow Herz, a senior majoring in American Studies and a Kamala Harris supporter, saw more complexities than advantages in the vice president’s decision to appear on Call Her Daddy last month. Alex Cooper, the 30-year-old host with over 3.3 million followers on Instagram and over 2.3 million on TikTok, is known for talking candidly with her predominantly female guests about relationships and sex. This caused Herz to worry that Harris’s 40-minute appearance could be perceived as performative or frivolous among voters who didn’t listen to it.
“I just don’t think people take Alex Cooper seriously,” Herz said.
Besides, she said, Cooper’s show is not the best venue to explore policy issues such as health care and reproductive rights in hopes of reaching an audience, known as “the Daddy Gang,” that the host herself has described as divided in its political affiliations.
Drew Cunningham, a freshman from California who said he was an undecided voter, pointed out another risk: politicians’ appearances on these platforms result in many memes and sound clips that are misinterpreted when presented out of context. A Saturday Night Live cast member, for example, portrayed Cooper in a TikTok parody video, including made-up questions about the vice president’s sex life.
To Cunningham, the result is a hardening of existing beliefs that only worsens the country’s political divides.
Sophomore Daniel Mnatsakanian understands why campaigns are now trying to sway young voters through podcasts, social media influencers and celebrity endorsements. These platforms allow candidates to reach a large audience outside of their usual political base, as witnessed by the more than 400,000 people who visited vote.gov within 24 hours of Taylor Swift including a link to the voter registration site in her Instagram endorsement of Harris.
Mnatsakanian noted that biases inherent in a podcast — either because of views held by the host or audience members — might bolster a candidate’s appeal to already like-minded young listeners more than it would bring in new supporters.
Several students said they believe that by discussing her policies and outlooks on Call Her Daddy, Harris ran the risk of backlash from those who don’t respect Cooper, while doing little to change the mind of voters.
Rogan interviewed Trump for three hours on Oct. 26 and then endorsed the former president on the eve of Tuesday’s election; Cooper made no endorsement in the race. The 57-year-old Rogan has a large audience of young men among his 14.5 million followers on Spotify, and he has been ranked as the #1 channel since Spotify introduced podcasts in 2015.
Some political analysts have speculated that Rogan’s audience played a meaningful role in electing Trump. But Andrea Nam, a senior from Paraguay, believes that while podcasts and social platforms help leaders connect with young voters, the time to be on them is not during the election season.
“If I would have voted here, I’m not sure that is something I would have wanted to see,” she said.
If politicians do appear on podcasts, they’re better off going on shows whose audience members hold opposing viewpoints rather than promoting themselves to demographics already in favor of them, Nam said.
Eugene Francisco, a sophomore, doubts that Trump’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience was as impactful as some political analysts are crediting it to be. Francisco believes that younger voters who remained undecided so close to election day were more likely to be impacted by peer pressures and the social media environment they experience.
The podcast episodes themselves are often overshadowed and less popular than the out-of-context clips that come from them, he said, adding, “Decontextualizing the conversations can be really dangerous. Social media definitely reduces the nuance involved in politics.”
