Podcasts have become a huge part of the election cycle

Thousands of Donald Trump supporters were left waiting at a rally in Michigan on Friday, after the Republican candidate rearranged his packed schedule to record a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan — a clear testament to the power of podcasting in this year’s election.

Though he’d previously ruled out hosting Trump on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which currently counts just under 16 million global Spotify followers, Rogan — like many other podders this election cycle — opened his platform to the presidential candidate, covering topics from election fraud to environmental concerns across the interview. The episode has a good chance of becoming the most-watched video on the channel, having already racked up 34 million views in just three days. The current tally already puts the Trump episode in fourth place out of the 3,200+ videos that have propelled the JRE YouTube channel to more than 5.5 billion total views.

It’s not just Donald Trump sitting down for interviews with big names in the space like Rogan, Theo Von, and Logan Paul, either, with Kamala Harris appearing on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” and hit podcast “All The Smoke” within the last month or so. Doing the rounds on popular podcasts has become an essential part of campaigning this year as the medium’s popularity continues to grow. A record 47% of Americans aged 12 and over reported listening to a podcast in the last month, per Edison Research’s annual The Infinite Dial report.

While Joe Rogan, who renewed his Spotify deal (minus the exclusivity clause) for an estimated $250 million earlier this year, is way out in front in terms of Spotify followers, Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” boasts a not inconsiderable 4.3 million followers around the world, while Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” counts 1.4 million.