Harris reaches new voters with a media offensive, both traditional and not: NPR

Vice President Harris appears on screen during a taping with Oprah Winfrey on September 19th. Harris is on a media campaign this week that includes stops The view on ABC, The Howard Stern Show And The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS.

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Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Vice President Harris will make a series of high-profile media appearances this week on some of the country's most popular news and entertainment programs.

She is scheduled to appear on Tuesday The view on ABC, The Howard Stern Show And The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS. On Thursday, she will attend a Univision town hall in Nevada.

Harris also spoke with CBS News' Bill Whitaker for an interview that aired Monday 60 minutes and sat down with podcast host Alex Cooper for her show Call her dadwhich aired on Sunday.

It is a series of media appearances that the vice president's campaign says are specifically designed to reach a broad audience on various platforms, especially as voting begins in many states across the country and Election Day approaches.

“Vice President Harris is taking this opportunity to reach voters where they are,” a Harris campaign official said in a statement ahead of the vice president’s interview with Cooper, adding that the appearance “underscores how important it is to be with “Connecting with a younger audience, especially those who do “will play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the election.”

A big focus of her media campaign is on young voters

The candidates from the major parties sat down with them 60 minutes from 1968. The show has a traditionally older audience and a huge reach and remains the Top ranked newscast for decades.

But with her interview with Cooper, a millennial, Harris became the first female presidential candidate ever to appear Call her dad, one of the most popular podcasts in the countryparticularly among womenwhere, according to Edison Research, nearly 8 out of 10 of the show's listeners are under 35 years old.

It's a podcast known for celebrity interviews and frank, women-focused discussions about topics like sex and relationships – not politics. But that hasn't stopped Harris, who is banking on the support of young voters this fall.

“I think you and your listeners have really understood that one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be authentic,” Harris told Cooper after she was asked why she wanted to be on the show .

“I think right now this is a moment in the country and in life where people really want to know that they are seen and heard,” she added. “And that they are part of a community. That they’re not alone out there.”

Harris spoke with Cooper for about 40 minutes, spending most of the time on the topic of protecting abortion access. The interview was an opportunity for Harris to try to reach a key voting bloc – Generation Z and Millennial voters, whose numbers were smaller than older generations.

Cooper has also developed a huge following online, with more than 11 million followers on her show and her personal accounts on Instagram and TikTok. Plus, Call her dad According to Edison, he has a politically and geographically diverse following.

Nearly half of the audience identifies as Democrats, compared to a quarter who are Republicans and 20% who are independents. Additionally, most of Cooper's listeners — a third — live in the South, an area with key swing states like Georgia and North Carolina.

It's not the first time Harris has strayed from the mainstream news media to appeal to voting blocs crucial to her potential victory. Last month she was on the sports podcast All that smoke, a show aimed at black menhosted by former NBA players Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes.

Trump has also reached out to influencers and podcasters

These moves aren't just for the Harris campaign. Former President Trump also made a point of reaching voters outside of traditional news channels and through social media, a strategy that was central to the campaign's youth outreach.

While Trump has largely conducted interviews with news outlets friendly to conservatives, he and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have also appeared with a number of popular influencers and sat down for podcast interviews in recent months , which have done so, have predominantly younger, male-dominated audiences.

This includes conversations with influencers who also have some of these Top podcasts in the countrylike Logan Paul – who has 46 million followers on TikTok and Instagram combined – and Theo Von, who has a combined 14 million followers on the same platforms.