Politicians Should Be Targeting Joe Rogan's Fans, Data Shows
More than 7 in 10 avid Rogan fans are men, and a similar share are under the age of 45. About half of avid Rogan fans identify as Republican, and even more describe themselves as conservative. There are small differences between the average avid Rogan fan and nonfan when it comes to household income, though nearly 7 in 10 adults in both groups have no college education.
The avid Rogan fan is far less likely than a nonfan to say they live in America’s suburbs, and are also slightly less likely to be white, driven by higher levels of fandom among Hispanic adults.
Tim Miller, who ran communications for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the group is “the very demographic Democrats need to be worried about,” noting concerns about maintaining the level of support President Joe Biden received in 2020 with “white men with heterodox political views” and stopping attrition from voters of color, especially Hispanics.
Citing Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy’s digital media company, as an example of a similar audience, he said, “If the only thing they’re getting is cultural commentary from the right, is it a surprise they’re turning toward the right? I don't think so.”
But getting Democrats to engage may be easier said than done.
Blowback from the left
According to JRE Library, a website that chronicles guest appearances on Rogan’s podcast, politicians have been the featured interview on just 11 of his nearly 1,800 episodes, including three appearances by former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, two by Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas and one each by Sanders and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang ahead of the 2020 presidential primary.
At the time, Yang’s campaign manager credited his appearance on Rogan’s show for generating the level of attention and money that landed the long shot on the presidential debate stage — a sign of the value in talking to Rogan’s massive audience. In Sanders’ interview, he answered Rogan’s conversational questions about universal health care and the influence of money in politics, praising the longform medium’s “opportunity to talk about an agenda in more than 12 seconds” in contrast to debates or the traditional television interview.
But those ventures were not without controversy: Sanders drew criticism from liberal groups for later touting an endorsement from a host who had made derogatory comments about transgender and Black people on air – and that was before video of him saying the N-word 24 times on his show was unearthed earlier this year.
“It's one thing for Joe Rogan to endorse a candidate,” the liberal activist group MoveOn said on Twitter in January 2020. “It's another for @BernieSanders’ campaign to produce a video bolstering the endorsement of someone known for promoting transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny.”
Asked about the backlash, Gray said Sanders’ campaign may have been strategically wrong to produce a video promoting Rogan’s statement that he’d vote for Sanders, given the perceptions it fueled. But she noted that the Vermonter wasn’t alone in the 2020 field in attempting to reach the celebrity’s audience.
“Every presidential candidate was begging to go on,” she said. “This idea that they’re high and mighty — everybody wants to go on his show.”
A representative of Rogan did not respond to questions for this story.
What politicians could gain from going on Rogan’s show
Rogan has continued to make contentious and insensitive comments about transgender people, and his latest controversy centers on his elevation of and sympathetic questions to vaccine skeptics, prompting online outrage that he was leading his audience down an anti-science path. While it’s true that avid Rogan fans are less likely than nonfans to have received COVID-19 vaccines, the survey found that the majority of them (55 percent) have received their shots.
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