Influencers Influencers have never been more important to electoral politics. They are trendsetters, share memes, create videos and organise; they also wield significant power when it comes to encouraging their followers to vote. That’s why we created a visual and interactive list of influencers and content creators from the right and left, where you can see how their followers compare to each other and how they are connected to this election.
The list we’ve put together here probably includes some creators you know and some you might not: since the 2020 election, the internet has become increasingly fragmented and personalized, with social media algorithms creating custom feeds for each user. We put together this list to show who’s who in politics in internet communities.
The size of each creator’s bubble corresponds to the number of followers they have on their primary social media platform, although many of these creators promote massive audiences on many others.
The creators we’ve selected for this project are just a sample of some of the most influential people pushing political content on the internet, including everyone from micro-influencers to billionaires like Elon Musk. Creators must meet a combination of criteria for inclusion, including whether they post primarily 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 disabled people. They must also demonstrate that their content has impact, whether that’s driving news cycles or inspiring political change. For the right, that means lots of meme creators and talk-radio-type influencers.
Throughout the 2024 election, influencers, content creators, and podcasters have been receiving invitations to swanky political fundraisers, party conventions, and rallies, while sharing what it’s like to be onstage and behind the scenes with their millions of online followers—something that stands out significantly from the traditional party courting of the famous and infamous by mass audiences that influencers can address in real time. A recent survey by Billion Dollar Boy Global Creator Agency At least one in four creators was found to have been 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 credited influencers alongside journalists.
Influencers have also opened their audiences to the candidates: Trump has appeared on numerous creator-led podcasts, and the Harris campaign’s embrace of “brat summer” and the influencers who championed it became a defining moment in this cycle. The biggest influencers on the right include billionaires like Musk and more mainstream right-wing media figures like Charlie Kirk. That’s likely why they have significantly larger followings than some of the younger creators on the left.
Political influencers aren’t going away, but it’s still unclear how much their followers might influence elections. 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.