The campaign trail now runs straight through your For You page. A new survey says most American adults are getting at least some of their midterm election information from online creators, and campaigns on both sides are building whole programs around that fact. According to Net Influencer‘s Cecilia Carloni, a YouGov survey commissioned by the news app SaySo found that nearly two in three U.S. adults get midterm information from creators.
What the survey found
YouGov polled 2,000 U.S. adults from September 16 to 28, with a margin of error of 2.46 percentage points. The headline number is 64%, and it climbs to 77% for Gen Z and 67% for millennials. About 43% of adults say they get election news from creators at least weekly.
Among those weekly viewers, 47% say creators cover topics or perspectives they don’t get from traditional news, the top reason given. Another 39% say creators are more engaging or relatable. More than half of weekly viewers, 52%, say something a creator posted has influenced their opinion of a candidate, an issue or the midterms.
Trust is closer to a three-way split than a landslide. Among weekly viewers, 36% trust creators and traditional news equally, 34% trust creators more and 30% trust traditional outlets more. And 54% say they always or often double-check what creators tell them against another source.
“A soft voice in their living room”
Dion Bailey, chief product and technology officer at Caliber, the media company behind SaySo, told Net Influencer the results show “we are in a transition for how news is consumed.” He argued legacy outlets were slow to adapt, treating websites like their old print products. “The point was to entice people back to their platform versus meeting them where they are,” he said. Creators, in his words, are “more of a soft voice in their living room now with professional mics.”
Bailey also wants creators to show their sources, correct themselves in public and disclose payment. On paid political posts, he asked, “Why not make that public?”
Campaigns are building creator programs
The politicians have noticed. As USA Today‘s Emily R. Condon reports, parties and campaigns on both sides are working with creators, some through unpaid collaborations and others through paid partnerships that work a lot like political ads.
More than 100 conservative creators were invited to a “Creator Lounge” at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in September. Republican consultant CJ Pearson, 24, who runs an agency pairing creators with campaigns, told USA Today that voters are “looking to independent creators to fill that gap” left by traditional media. On the other side, the creator campaign agency People First brought more than 1,000 creators, reaching over 100 million followers combined, onto an October 6 call with Democratic leaders and handed out a “get out the vote kit” of clips and resources.
It isn’t only political creators getting the calls. USA Today points to beauty creator Gabriel Zamora reminding his followers to register to vote while doing his makeup, in a collaboration with the nonpartisan When We All Vote initiative. Democratic strategist Maria Comstock said choosing the right creators “adds a level of trust with their audience.”
Why local news matters here
George Washington University professor David Karpf told USA Today that campaigns used to reach tuned-out voters through local news. With much of that local media gone, influencers have become the way to reach “people who are already deciding to tune them out.” Candidates are also becoming creators themselves. As Pearson put it, “does it get more influential than a politician who makes laws?”
The takeaway
For creators, election season has turned into another kind of brand deal, with briefings, toolkits and paid posts. The survey suggests the audience is there and open to persuasion, but also checking sources. That puts disclosure front and center: creators who say plainly when they are paid are the ones most likely to keep the trust that makes them worth hiring in the first place.
Image: AI-generated illustration.
