Our Midterms Winners & Losers

The biggest winners and losers from Tuesday’s midterm elections in the US are obvious: Democrats swept both the House and Senate.

In today’s newsletter, we look past the ballot box to who else we think won and lost—and what is still too close to call.

• Meme accounts were the biggest creator economy winners from the midterms. Jokes and celebratory posts from meme-makers and left-wing creators took over social media feeds, with some calling the results the start of “Gen Z optimism” and “Woke 3.0.” We also chuckled at bits about AI data centers being turned into Planned Parenthood locations.

• The mainstream media was an unexpected winner on Tuesday night. From NBC News’ “Kornacki Cam” to the New York Times’ timely explainer videos, veteran journalists’ expertise drew in viewers. We loved CNN’s John King comparing results to past elections he’s covered and Steve Kornacki’s genuine shock as key races were called. (Kaya interned for King during the 2014 midterms and can attest to his encyclopedic political knowledge.)

Early data from Nielsen shows a combined total of roughly 25.8 million viewers across the six major US TV networks. That’s ahead of the 2022 midterms, when 25.4 million people tuned in across 12 networks. NBC, in particular, crushed it this year: Over 6.5 million people tuned in.

• Prediction markets got a major boost. Many treated the midterms as a test for platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, and they passed. Polymarket said on Wednesday that its markets were accurate in over 98% of resolved races compared to the day before the election. Kalshi claimed a similar accuracy rate.

Prediction markets have exploded in popularity since correctly picking Donald Trump to win the presidency in 2024. Americans had wagered nearly $1.9 billion on the midterms going into Election Day, according to the Washington Post. 

But they’ve had some major misses, such as favoring Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, where he finished third. Regulatory and consumer scrutiny is also growing after a string of insider trading cases and ethical issues, like betting on tragedies and disasters.

• Social media producers and strategists were unsung heroes. Candidates like Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico grew their social followings and engagement significantly this election cycle. But they didn’t do it alone. Behind the scenes, teams of mostly young people were crafting the candidates’ social media presences and managing their creator relationships.

We want to meet the strategists behind El-Sayed’s viral campaign video styled as a “Love Island” intro. Or in this case… “Senate Island.”

• Honorable mention: The Cheesecake Factory. While campaigning in Ohio, former President Barack Obama said President Trump’s White House renovations made it look like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” Ouch! 

After Trump and other Republicans fired back, Obama clarified that he’s a longtime patron of the chain. Cheesecake Factory memes have since flooded social media. We’re curious to see if the brand will respond. 

• Creators’ influence was a mixed bag. Some well-known influencers who rarely talk politics, including Morgan Riddle and Brandon Edelman, better known as Bran Flakezz, encouraged followers to vote for Democrats just ahead of Election Day, but they appeared to be outliers. Meanwhile, Logan and Jake Paul’s September visit to Washington, D.C. seemed to have little impact despite clips and photos of them meeting with Vice President JD Vance and troops at the Pentagon going viral.

Instead, the emphasis seemed to be on local creators in battleground states. This makes sense: Each race is different, so campaigns likely prioritized grassroots activation over a national push.

• Livestreaming definitely had a moment, with more creators and creator-led media companies hosting their first live midterms coverage. Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker said he isn’t a “kingmaker”—except maybe when it comes to himself: His election night stream drew a peak of nearly 242,000 concurrent viewers, per analytics platform Streams Charts.

Overall, election-related livestreams drew over 10 million hours of viewing in the 30 days ahead of Election Day. Piker accounted for nearly 45% of total watch time.

But Piker and other livestreamers still had to compete with traditional media outlets, which also got in on the action. NBC’s “Kornacki Cam” gained 29 million total views across all platforms and ranked as the No. 1 election livestream on YouTube.

• Right-wing political advertisers were the biggest losers. Republicans outspent Democrats on Senate races by about  $250 million, per media-tracking company AdImpact. Ultimately, it didn’t matter: Democrats dominated key races. 

The results also raise questions about the effectiveness of traditional political advertising in general. Historically, the logic has been that whoever spends the most money wins. But the changing media landscape and major economic uncertainty meant dollars weren’t enough to win votes. Some ads even backfired spectacularly, including Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad featuring his opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother, which sparked bipartisan outrage. Acton won the Ohio governor’s race.

• Elon Musk’s political influence took a major hit. He seemingly acknowledged this in a tongue-in-cheek post on his social media platform X, which said: “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” referring to the 2024 US presidential election when he backed Trump.

Musk spent a whopping $474 million to support Republicans in the midterms, with roughly half going to Texas, where he has relocated his businesses. Democrats won both the Texas Senate and governor’s races, marking the party’s first statewide wins in more than 30 years.

• Podcasting was an unexpected loser. In 2024, the manosphere was credited with helping sway young men to vote for Trump. But Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump at the time, has since distanced himself. Rogan is not the only one turning on Trump: Mentions of the president on conservative podcasts have plunged nearly 70% from their peak in 2024, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal.

Overall, we didn’t hear as much about podcasts or podcasters this election cycle. That’s in part because it doesn’t feel as novel as it did in 2024, especially with podcasts available everywhere from YouTube to cable news channels to Netflix. We also suspect that many people consumed podcast content featuring candidates via clips on social media. But that’s a big departure from two years ago, when millions of people tuned into hours-long episodes.

We love hearing from our community! We’ve been answering your questions regularly in our newsletter, but this week, we decided to dive deeper in our podcast. We answer—and sometimes debate—your most-asked questions, including:

Watch on YouTube below or tune in wherever you get your podcasts.

Got a question? Just respond to this email. 

in partnership with Central Talent Booking

Landing the right guests can make or break the success of a podcast. Podcasts and creator shows are now where the biggest conversations happen, so booking guests is more competitive than ever. Creators aren’t only up against each other anymore. They’re competing with celebrities who have launched shows of their own.

Landing a guest also takes real work. We know this firsthand: you have to figure out who’s right for your audience, find the right contact, pitch them and coordinate schedules, all before prep for the interview even begins.

That’s why we’re so excited to be partnering with Central Talent Booking (CTB). CTB books guests for podcasts and creator-led digital shows across comedy, wellness, business, news and culture. They bring deep talent relationships and booking experience to finding the right guests for each show, pitching their teams and locking in the dates, so hosts can spend their time on the conversation itself. They also help us manage our own inbound guest requests.

Founder Joanna Jordan has been doing this for more than 25 years. She started CTB in 1999 after running the talent booking department at The Late Show with David Letterman. Today, CTB works with some of the biggest podcasts and creators out there.

If you have a show and want to land the guests who will help it grow, visit centraltalentbooking.com.

Snap’s business is becoming more and more consumer, rather than advertiser, driven. While ad sales are still far bigger than user-generated revenue, Snapchat+ and other subscription offerings surpassed 30 million paid subscribers, per the company’s third quarter results. Those subscription fees helped contribute to 84% growth in Snap’s other revenue, which includes subscriptions. Ad revenue grew by just 4% year-over-year.

Creators came up only once—and in passing—during the prepared remarks on Wednesday’s call with analysts. Instead, much more airtime was given to improving advertiser performance and what users love about Snapchat, likely to quell concerns about slower-than-expected daily active user growth.

The company will also switch to reporting global monthly active users as the primary user metric in the first quarter of 2027. Between the lines, that could also help hide some of the slowing DAU momentum and MAUs make the platform look much bigger. Snap said it had 977 million MAUs as of last quarter, compared with 495 million DAUs.

Instagram’s Edits launched a desktop version of the app designed for more complex projects that need a bigger screen. The launch comes just after Instagram rolled out long-form video.

ISO, a creator management firm, launched on Thursday. Its co-founders are Mike Lee, the former head of gaming and livestreaming at UTA Creators, and Darren Yan, the former chief talent officer at FaZe Clan. The new firm is backed by Influence Media Partners and represents clients including VTuber Ironmouse and streamer PlaqueBoyMax. 

Emerson College is the latest to launch a content creation major. Arizona State University recently launched a similar degree, while Syracuse University opened its “Center for the Creator Economy” this fall. 

Adobe is bringing licensed music from artists at Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to Adobe Premiere mobile.

That’s the percentage of marketers who said measurement challenges were holding back their podcasting investments, according to a new report from Oxford Road. And 90% of brands with annual media budgets of $100 million said measurement was a top concern.

This doesn’t surprise us since effective measurement is a challenge we hear about constantly. In podcasting in particular, respondents also cited cluttered and repetitive ad breaks. We see this contributing to the podcasting reckoning we’ve reported on this year. 

Druski signed a multi-year partnership with Netflix for exclusive content. On December 1, they’ll premiere “Collect & Praise,” a new semi-scripted comedy series with Druski’s megachurch pastor character from social media. Druski is having quite the moment, considering he’ll be the first content creator to host SNL. 

Whitney Leavitt, a former star of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” is getting her own reality show on Hulu focused on her family. 

Rich Latour joined Meta as VP of its in-house content studio. Previously, he was a producer at NBC Nightly News and a managing director at BlackRock, leading content, creative and events.

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