内容创作者正在影响远不止我们的咖啡订单和护肤程序。根据Morning Consult在九月对约2000名美国成年人进行的调查，约四分之一的美国人（26%）表示，网红内容影响了他们投票的对象，该调查结果独家分享给了《商业内幕》。营销公司People First的创始合伙人Nicole Dunger表示，创作者内容是政治竞选的一个“被低估的渠道”，该公司与候选人和倡导团队合作制定创作者策略。
Content creators are influencing much more than our coffee orders and skincare routines. About one in four Americans (26%) say influencer content has affected who they've voted for, according to a survey of around 2,000 US adults conducted by Morning Consult in September, shared exclusively with Business Insider. Creator content is an "underestimated avenue" for political campaigns, said Nicole Dunger, a founding partner at the marketing firm People First, which works with candidates and advocacy groups on their creator strategies.
“它现在已经成为这个领域的真正参与者和重要参与者。”如果2024年是播客选举，那么2026年正在塑造为网红选举。Instagram和TikTok的创作者已经加入福克斯新闻主持人和诸如Joe Rogan之类的人物，成为选民获取信息的首选来源。像Jake Paul和Hasan Piker这样的网红今年已成为政治领域的主要人物。Paul最近在俄亥俄州与唐纳德·特朗普总统一起参加中期集会，并在TikTok上发布了他乘坐空军一号的视频片段。
"It is a real player and a big player in this space now." If 2024 was the podcast election, 2026 is shaping up to be the influencer one. Instagram and TikTok creators have joined Fox News hosts and personalities like Joe Rogan as go-to sources of information for voters. Influencers like Jake Paul and Hasan Piker have emerged as main characters in politics this year. Paul recently joined President Donald Trump in Ohio for a midterm rally, posting TikTok clips of his Air Force One flight.
与此同时，Piker已成为密歇根州的Abdul El-Sayed等进步人士的竞选盟友，也成为福克斯新闻评论员的负面谈资。随着在线注意力成为政治中的关键资产，网红正在帮助候选人突破信息噪声。略高于一半的美国成年人（56%）告诉Morning Consult，创作者内容在某种程度上影响了他们对政治或社会问题的看法。这一比例在Z世代受访者中更高，近四分之三的受访者表示他们的观点受到网红帖子的影响。
Piker, meanwhile, has become a campaign ally for progressives like Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed and a negative talking point for Fox News commentators. As online attention has become a key asset in politics, influencers are helping candidates break through the noise. A little over half of US adults (56%) told Morning Consult that creator content had affected their views on political or social issues to some degree. That figure jumped among Gen Z respondents, where close to three in four respondents said their views had been swayed by influencer posts.
对于竞选团队而言，挑战在于识别合适的创作者进行合作，特别是当许多网红并不定期谈论政治时。
For campaigns, the challenge is identifying the right creators to work with, particularly when many influencers don't regularly talk about politics.
“你必须拥有你的基本盘人群，你的核心支持者，然后你还需要拥有一个更广泛的文化空间，其中的人并不总是谈论政治，”卢米纳里策略公司的管理合伙人帕克·巴特勒说，该公司与詹姆斯·塔拉里科等民主党候选人合作开展社交媒体策略。“为不同目的拥有不同的创作者群体是值得的。”巴特勒表示，2026年将重点接触粉丝数量比派克（约300万Twitch粉丝）或保罗（约2100万YouTube订阅者）少的创作者。
"You have to have your base of people, your core supporters, and then you have to have a broader cultural space of people who don't always talk about politics," said Parker Butler, a managing partner at the digital strategy firm Luminary Strategies, which works on social strategy with Democratic candidates like James Talarico. "It's worth having different pockets of creators for different purposes." Reaching creators with smaller followings than Piker (about 3 million Twitch followers), or Paul (around 21 million YouTube subscribers) is a focus in 2026, Butler said.
他说，目标是将创作者推广策略从“这个人有一百万粉丝”转变为识别那些在竞选活动试图触及的特定利基领域工作的影响者。越来越多的政治讨论正在数字平台上进行，无论是播客、YouTube视频还是Twitch直播。根据雪城大学的一项调查，YouTube是美国成年人在9月获取政治和选举新闻的首要来源，仅微弱地领先于电视、印刷媒体和X（前身为Twitter）。
He said the goal is to shift the creator outreach strategy from "this person has a million followers" to identifying influencers who work in a particular niche a campaign is trying to reach. More and more, political discussions are playing out on digital platforms, whether that's podcasts, YouTube videos, or Twitch streams. YouTube was the top source for political and election news among US adults in September, narrowly beating out TV, print, and X (formerly Twitter), according to a survey from Syracuse University.
根据播客行业组织《盈利之声》对可能参加中期选举的选民进行的7月至8月调查，大约五分之一的民主党人和共和党人表示，播客亮相可能会让他们“更有可能支持一位候选人”。独立人士中这一比例较小（11%），表示播客可能会让他们更有可能支持一位候选人。虽然竞选团队看到注意力正在向线上转移，但他们仍然将广告预算的大部分用于电视。
About one in five Democrats and Republicans said podcast appearances could make them "more likely to support a candidate," according to a July through August survey of likely midterm voters from the podcast industry group Sounds Profitable. A smaller share of Independents (11%) said podcasts could make them more likely to back a candidate. While campaigns see attention moving online, they're still spending the bulk of their ad budgets on TV.
部分原因可能是他们习惯于购买电视广告时段。他们也在认识到，影响者营销更难预测和衡量，特别是随着社交媒体信息流变得更加个性化和算法驱动。“这可能非常具有挑战性，但你最终会看到结果，”邓格说。“挨家挨户敲门也是如此。”
Part of that may be because they're accustomed to buying TV spots. They're also reckoning with the fact that influencer marketing is harder to predict and measure, particularly as social-media feeds become more personalized and algorithmically driven. "It can be very challenging, but you see the results in the end," Dunger said. "It's the same with door knocking.
我们知道挨家挨户敲门某种程度上是有效的，而且已经有效很长时间了，但我们并没有那些直接的测量数据。
We know door knocking somehow works and has worked for so long, but it's not like we have those direct measurements."