Influencers have never been more important to electoral politics. They are tastemakers, meme-sharers, video makers, and organizers; they also wield considerable power when it comes to encouraging their followers to vote. That’s why we’ve created a visual and interactive list of influencers and content creators from the right and left, where you can see how their followers compare and how they’re connected to this election.
The list we've compiled here likely includes some creators you know and others you may not: since the 2020 election, the internet has become a lot more popular. increasingly fragmented and personalized with social media algorithms creating customized feeds for each user. We've compiled this list to show who's who in politics in communities across the internet.
The size of each creator’s bubble equates to the number of followers they have on their primary social media platform, despite many of these creators having massive audiences across multiple other platforms. You can tap or scroll over each bubble for a more detailed breakdown.
The creators we’ve chosen for this project are just a sampling of the most influential people promoting political content online, from micro-influencers to billionaires like Elon Musk. Creators must meet a combination of criteria for inclusion, including whether they primarily post about politics or have worked directly with political campaigns or PACs. If they don’t have a large audience, they must have influence in at least one specific community of people, whether that’s immigrants or people with disabilities. They must also show that their content is having an impact by shaping the news cycle or inspiring political change. On the right, that means a lot of meme makers and talk radio-style influencers.
During the 2024 elections, influencers, content creators and podcasters will have received invitations to fancy political fundraisers, party conventions and rallies, while showing their millions of online followers what it’s like to be on stage and behind the scenes. This is something that differs in a significant way from the traditional way in which parties court celebrities and infamous people through large audiences, and to which influencers can respond in real time. A recent study by the global creative agency Billion Dollar Boy found that at least one in four creators were approached by political campaigns and organizations to produce political content ahead of the 2024 election. This year marks the first time the Democratic National Convention has certified influencers in addition to journalists.
In turn, influencers have opened up their audiences to the candidates: Trump has appeared on numerous creator-led podcasts, and the embrace of “brat summer” by the Harris campaign and the influencers who have championed it has a defining moment in this cycle. The biggest influencers on the right are billionaires like Musk and more mainstream right-wing media figures like Charlie Kirk. That’s probably why they have significantly more followers than some of the younger creators on the left.
Political influencers aren’t going anywhere, but the extent to which their followers can sway elections remains to be seen. They’ve already changed the way we experience politics online. Now we’ll see if they can actually encourage voters to go to the polls.
Getty Images; Yuvraj Khanna/Redux (Sisson)