A Quarter of Podcast Listeners Say a Candidate's Appearance Could Change Their Vote

I spend a lot of hours in rental cars, airport lounges, and overnight buses with a podcast in my ears. So when I saw this new research out of Sounds Profitable, I had to dig in.

Here's the headline number: one in four likely voters who listen to podcasts monthly say a candidate showing up on a podcast could make them more likely to vote for that person. Nine percent say the opposite — it could push them away. Among weekly listeners, the split is almost identical: 26% positive, 8% negative.

That's a real swing. In an election decided by a point or two, that kind of influence matters.

What caught my attention, though, wasn't the raw number. It was where that influence is coming from.

You'd assume this is mostly political junkies tuning into political talk shows, right? Turns out that's not the case. Likely voters who don't listen to political podcasts at all are just as likely to say a candidate's appearance could sway them — 25%, same as the political-podcast crowd. And here's the kicker: that non-political group makes up 70% of likely voters who listen to podcasts monthly.

So the audience being influenced isn't sitting around listening to pundits argue about polling data. They're listening to comedy shows, sports shows, true crime, business interviews — the stuff most of us actually choose to listen to. A candidate doesn't need to go on a political show to move votes. They just need to go where the people already are.

That's a different way of thinking about political communication, and I kind of love it. It's the same lesson I've learned traveling the world for almost eight years now: you don't find the good stuff by staying in the expected lane. You find it by showing up somewhere people didn't expect you.

Tom Webster from Sounds Profitable put it simply. The 2024 presidential race got called the "podcast election," and we all saw candidates popping up on shows that had nothing to do with politics. Two years later, the data backs up what a lot of people suspected watching that play out — podcasting's influence goes way beyond news and commentary.

It's not a one-party story either. Among likely Republican voters, 21% say a podcast appearance could make them more likely to back a candidate. For Democrats, it's 19%. Independents are more skeptical, at 11%. So the effect cuts across the aisle, even if it doesn't land the same way everywhere.

And listeners seem to be getting more comfortable with the whole idea. Sixty percent of monthly podcast consumers now say it's appropriate for politicians to appear on podcasts, up from 56% last year. Even among all US adults — not just the podcast crowd — 48% say it's fine, with only 10% calling it inappropriate.

Political talk itself is still one of the five biggest podcast genres out there, and it's almost perfectly split down party lines — 36% Democrat, 35% Republican. So the genre isn't dying. It's just no longer the only door into a voter's attention.

This whole thing makes me ask: what happens if campaigns stop treating podcasts as a niche media buy and start treating them as a primary way to actually talk to people? Not scripted soundbites. Real conversation, the kind that runs an hour or two, where a candidate can't hide behind a talking point.

I notice the same thing in my own listening habits. I trust the shows where I feel like I'm hearing someone think out loud, not perform. Maybe voters are responding the same way — less interested in polish, more interested in whether someone sounds real.

The data's based on a survey of 5,473 US adults, and it's part of Sounds Profitable's Podcast Landscape 2026 report. Worth a look if you're curious how this keeps shaping the 2026 cycle.

Either way, if a candidate wants to reach you next year, don't be surprised if it's between a sports recap and a true crime episode, not during the evening news.

Source: PodcastingToday

Our last article on this: How Much Karl Stefanovic's Indie Podcast Is Really Raking In