KEEN OBSERVERS OF last year’s presidential election in the US will remember the pivotal role podcasts played.

The winner, Donald Trump, garnered the attention of millions with his blitz of some of the US’s most popular podcasts, largely aimed at men.

Trump appeared on 14 major podcasts or streams during the campaign, including Joe Rogan’s, Logan Paul’s and Theo Von’s. At the time of writing, streams of these episodes have amassed a combined 74 million views on YouTube.

For her part, Kamala Harris also tapped into the power of podcasts in a bid to reach her target demographics, opting to appear on shows popular with young women and Black men.

Where The Joe Rogan Experience was the height of Trump’s podcast endeavours, Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy was the height of Harris’s (albeit to a much lesser extent).

As is often the case, what is popular in the US tends to find its way across the Atlantic, and podcasts have also played an important role in this year’s Irish presidential election – for one candidate at least.

Independent Catherine Connolly has been on her own blitz of Irish podcasts since announcing her candidacy in July.

So far, she has appeared on The Blindboy Podcast, The Louise McSharry Podcast, How to Gael (hosted by Síomha Ní Ruairc, Louise Cantillon, and Doireann Ní Ghlacáin), Joe Brolly’s Free State podcast, Síle Seoige’s Ready to be Real, and James Kavanagh and William Murray’s The Simple Life.

She also did a live podcast episode for online publication The Ditch.

Heather Humphreys, by comparison, has so far only done long-form podcast interviews with the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner. She also appeared very briefly on The Tumbling Paddies podcast (for approximately 2 minutes) during their ploughing episode.

Both candidates have committed to paying a visit to Journal HQ next week for interviews on our political podcast, The Candidate, but other than that, it is not clear what other podcasts, if any, Humphreys plans to participate in before polling day.

Humphreys’ decision to participate in so few podcasts so far during the campaign is not for lack of invitations.

She was invited to appear on the Louise McSharry podcast and How to Gael, but to date has chosen not to.

Connolly’s campaign, on the other hand, has taken a totally different approach and proactively requested to appear on podcasts.

Not all of the shows Connolly appeared on were happy to extend an invitation to Humphreys, however.

Speaking to The Journal, James Kavanagh and Blindboy both said they were approached by Connolly’s campaign and asked if they would do an interview with her.

Both agreed because they said they found her interesting. Neither podcast requested to interview Humphreys, or indeed, received requests to interview her.

Explaining his decision not to extend an invite to Humphreys, Blindboy said:

“I just don’t think we’d have the craic.”

He added: “I only speak with people I’m genuinely curious about, and who I think my listeners will want to hear from.”

Moreover, Blindboy said he tends to try to avoid platforming “party politics”.

“I used to have Rory Hearne on a lot, but I stopped when he joined the Soc Dems. Even though I love Rory and he’s a brilliant guest. I want to avoid platforming any member of a political party.

“I had Jeremy Corbyn on this year, but that doesn’t count because it’s the Brits,” he said.

Similarly, James Kavanagh told us that he wasn’t interested in having Humphreys on the podcast.

Louise McSharry, whose podcast has more of a news and current affairs focus than Kavanagh’s or Bindboy’s, told The Journal that she received requests from Connolly’s team and Jim Gavin’s team about doing interviews and that she then contacted Humphreys’ team to ask if she would be interested in doing one as well, but she never heard back.

Given where things currently stand in the polls – the latest puts Connolly at 38% to Humphreys’ 20% – has it been a mistake by her campaign not to do more?

According to PR and communications expert Eoghan Tomás McDermott, it has.

McDermott, who heads up the Communications Clinic in Dublin, told us that podcasts are a “hugely important” part of political campaigns in this day and age.

“They’re a conduit through to an audience. The great thing about podcasting is that they tend to have rich data in terms of who is listening, and therefore make it straightforward enough to profile their audience,” he said.

McDermott said sometimes traditional media will be the best way to reach a desired audience, but more often, podcasts are also a useful way of doing the same.

“And what you can also see is on some of those podcasts, they then clip it for social, which, in and of itself, gets a kind of a secondary media bang from it,” he added.

Even though the podcasts Connolly has appeared on likely largely attract listeners who would lean left in their politics, McDermott said it’s useful to think there are “floating voters” among the listenership, too.

“But they may decide, okay, although the listenership is big, the level of floating voters there isn’t significant enough for us to reach them,” he explained.

Asked if podcasts are now just a part of political campaigning that candidates really need to be attuned to, McDermott said: “Absolutely.”

“The amount of people now in Ireland who are consuming podcasts means that there is a significant audience, and that significant audience, in some ways, is up for grabs.” 

When contacted, the Fine Gael press office pointed us to the three podcasts Humphreys has participated in and said: 

“She has taken questions from journalists at doorsteps on every step of the campaign – often several times a day.

“Our candidate has participated in debates and hustings at events across the country. In the final week, more media, broadcast and podcast interviews are planned.”

The election will be held on Friday, 24 October.