Social Rocket
The US midterms of 3 November 2026 showed how large political livestreams have become: 20,87 million hours were watched on YouTube, Twitch, Rumble and Kick on election night. The analytics company Streams Charts counts roughly four times as much watch time as during the 2022 midterms. For media houses and marketing teams, the key question is who captures this attention and in which formats.
YouTube wins the masses, individual creators win loyalty
According to Streams Charts' analysis of 4 November, around 80 percent of watch time came through YouTube. NBC News led across platforms with 4,39 million hours viewed. The political Twitch streamer Hasan Piker alone reached 1,75 million hours, making him the second-largest single channel of the night. Right-leaning commentators such as Steven Crowder found their audience partly on Rumble.
At peak, 3,4 million people were watching the tracked streams at the same time. The 20,87 million hours, by contrast, are summed viewing time, not a count of individual viewers. Mass reach stayed mainly with established news brands, while the success of individual streamers shows how strongly a personal host brand can sustain long live sessions.
The market had already shifted noticeably before election day: between 4 October and 2 November, Streams Charts tracked 10,27 million hours of political livestreams across more than 2.500 channels. This 30-day figure describes a different period than election night and illustrates the lasting appetite for live commentary.
The campaign produced clips, podcasts and its own creator networks
Campaigns have long since stopped developing content only for classic TV spots. The later Texas senator James Talarico relied on short, deliberately shareable videos. A satirical clip in the style of a property show reached more than eight million views across platforms according to reporting by Puck, without the spot ever running on regular Texas television.
According to its own statements, cited by the Washington Post, the Democratic Party worked with a network of more than 500 creators. At the same time, Republican candidates also used podcasts, their own online communities and high-reach commentators. Political communication thus increasingly became a contest between recognisable personalities, not just between official party channels.
A precursor was the New York mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani 2025: his team combined short explainer videos, interviews with ordinary residents and collaboration with creators. The Carnegie Endowment describes how offline events were planned as social content from the start.
What German marketing teams can take away
Three mechanisms are interesting beyond US politics. First: if you want to stand out in the feed, you need a standalone format, not just clips from a long press conference. Second: short videos introduce new users to a topic, while personal live hosts create recurring viewing habits. Third: for major events, measurement has to distinguish between views, concurrent viewers and actually watched time.
This also raises the question of paid influence. Srocket has already explained why political influencer posts are a labelling question and how the rules for political meta ads differ between the US and Europe. For the budget perspective, it is also worth looking at CTV, YouTube and ad spending in the US midterms.
Election night was therefore also a stress test for the new media landscape: the major broadcasters provided broad live coverage, while creators built highly engaged audiences alongside them. This is a strategic development that reaches well beyond the US election.
Further sources: Reuters on creator coverage from 5. November, Adweek on the social campaign from 5. November.