The 2026 midterm elections haven’t generated the same buzz that made 2024 “The Podcast Election.” Presidential candidates packed their calendars with long-form interviews last cycle. This year, that energy has largely disappeared.
Signal Hill Insights President/CEO Paul Riismandel believes novelty fueled the original hype. He also sees a simple reason for this year’s quieter conversation.
“One of the reasons the 2024 election was deemed the podcast election is because we’ve never before seen a presidential candidate give so many long-form interviews like that,” said Riismandel. “It was new, and it was fresh. So that’s at least part of it.”
Hype Before the Data
Moreover, the buzz started well before researchers measured anything. Signal Hill Insights later surveyed podcast-listening registered voters in partnership with Vox Topica.
“All of the conjecture about it being a podcast election was done before anyone had done any research about it,” said Riismandel. “We did that research in collaboration with our partners at Vox Topica in 2025, retrospectively asking podcast listeners who are registered voters if podcasts had an influence on their voting decision in 2024. And we found that it had. But all the press about it being the podcast election was really just observational, if you will. Seeing, hey, look, Donald Trump is doing these long-form interviews.”
“Then there was this controversy about Joe Rogan inviting Kamala Harris onto his podcast, but she would have to go to Austin,” Riismandel shared. “He wasn’t going to go to her and things like that. So there was a lot of drama to report on, but it wasn’t based upon any known data at that moment. It wasn’t really until we did that research in the fall of 2025 that you could hang some facts on what was otherwise more conjecture.”
A Crowded Ballot, a Quieter Conversation
Meanwhile, the 2026 cycle offers no single, easy storyline for podcasts. Riismandel says the lack of a presidential race explains most of the silence.
“I think it’s because it’s not a presidential election,” said Riismandel. “We have hundreds of seats up right now across the United States for Congress, and it’s tough to track that many candidates. But when we go back to 2024, Donald Trump was making lots of podcast appearances. That was easy to watch and monitor. It was very easy to compare his appearances with those of his opponent, Kamala Harris. That’s one of the reasons we’re probably not seeing as much hubbub about it this year.”
In addition, the podcast audience has shifted politically over the past four years.
“Between 2022 and 2024, we started to see an increase in the number of podcast listeners who said they were Republican,” Riismandel shared. “In 2022, that number sat at 26%. By 2024, it sat at 30%. It’s always hard to draw a direct causal line. So to some extent, we can draw an inference that part of that growth in the overall podcasting audience was more people who were leaning or identify as Republican coming in as podcast listeners or viewers.”
What It Means Heading Into 2028
Today, the audience looks more like America as a whole. As of Q3 2026, 39% of podcast listeners identify as independents, which mirrors Gallup’s general population data. The Vox Topica research also showed what those listeners want.
“What people really were looking for from podcasts was more balanced viewpoints rather than strictly partisan viewpoints,” said Riismandel. “There seems to be some real hunger for that. Whether that ends up being more popular podcasts that serve that purpose, it’s hard to say. I can’t predict what producers are going to do. Certainly, we’ve seen some demand for partisan podcasts, whether it’s MeidasTouch, Crooked Media, Tucker Carlson, or things like The Bulwark.”
Ultimately, Riismandel expects podcasts to keep influencing voters. However, he can’t say which party benefits. He also wonders whether the novelty will fade.
“I think what we can say is that podcasts will continue to have influence,” the Signal Hill Insights executive shared. “I just wonder whether that stops being news. We’re not going to talk about the podcast election because, well, we had that one, and now we just take it for granted that podcasts are a source of political news and information. So whether it goes from being exceptional for a presidential candidate to give a long-form, unprepared interview to a podcast, or that just becomes part of the usual media circuit, that’s hard to predict. We’ll probably start to see signs as 2027 starts to wrap up, I suppose.”
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