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Harris and Trump’s Media Blitz, in Charts
Fragmented media landscape forces candidates to reach voters through a wider variety of appearances and interviews
Cumulative media appearances since becoming their party’s presidential nominee
By Anne Steele and Nate Rattner, WSJ
Updated Oct. 18, 2024 12:41 am ET
Kamala Harris needs Black male voters to buy into her campaign. Donald Trump needs more support from women. Both are trying to sway Latino voters.
The candidates’ media blitz this week shows a homestretch dash to appeal to critical demographics in an age when podcasts and YouTube livestreams can be as influential as a “60 Minutes” or late-night interview.
Trump has done far more media appearances than his rival since becoming his party’s official nominee, frequently calling in to Fox News shows and granting interviews to largely conservative print journalists while appearing on a range of podcasts. Harris has sped up her cadence of appearances in recent weeks.
Harris and Trump are tailoring their messages to voters in radically different formats, a far cry from the days when candidates could simply sit for a string of national and local TV or print interviews. Voters are left with different portraits of each candidate, depending on where they tuned in.
A fragmented media landscape in the 2024 cycle has allowed candidates to reveal different sides of their personalities and dig into narrower slices of their platforms.
Trump, in an appeal to young male voters on the "This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von" podcast, reflected on his brother’s struggles with alcoholism before speaking about the opioid crisis and lobbying.
Harris, targeting young female voters, talked on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast about a childhood friend who was sexually abused and encouraged women to speak up as part of a conversation centered on the importance of reproductive rights.
The candidates have struck different tones depending on the forum.
At a Fox News town hall, Trump said undocumented immigrants are taking advantage of public resources. “They’re filling up and loading up Social Security, Medicare, with illegal immigrants.”
His tone was softer in front of Latino voters at a Univision town hall, when he said the U.S. should allow some immigration. “We do want them in, and I want them in even more than you do.”
When Harris was asked on “The View” if she would have done anything differently than Joe Biden as president, the vice president shook her head and said “not a thing comes to mind.”
She drew a sharp line on Fox this week: “Let me be very clear. My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”
*Includes online †Digital video, including live streams and YouTube
Note: Data as of Oct. 16. Nomination dates are when Trump and Harris officially became their parties’ candidates. Details about each candidate's appearances were provided by their campaign. The WSJ categorized those appearances by format.
Source: WSJ analysis of media appearances data from the campaigns
“We don’t live in a world where three middle-aged white guys deliver the news at 6:30 every night,” said Democratic strategist Eric Schultz. “People get news and information from all sorts of sources, and it’s incumbent on candidates to meet people where they’re at.”
While legacy media typically comes with familiar protocols and objective journalists, the new world of campaign media appearances is all about the host’s point of view—and the audience that perspective draws.
Trump’s campaign pointed out that one of the former president’s recent appearances was on a podcast hosted by Lex Fridman, who has been a critic, and whose audience leans center to left-of-center.
“We get the opportunity to get Trump’s message to new viewers in a way that other means of media don’t,” said campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz. “A lot of people who tune in to Fox or CNN have made up their opinion of who they’re voting for.”
On the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, wildly popular with young women, Harris spoke at length about reproductive rights. Fox News didn’t bring up the topic at all in its interview with Harris on Wednesday.
“This is the election of the fractured media environment,” said Jonathan Nagler, co-director of NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics.
Chart showing media appearances from the two U.S. presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, since each became their party’s nominee, by platform. Platforms include legacy television, radio, print/online, podcast, video and X Spaces.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s media appearances since becoming their party’s presidential nominee
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