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View all search resultsVoters largely tuned out of social media in Australia's 2025 election
Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level.
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A bartender displays a campaign sticker ahead of a visit by Australia's re-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to a local brewery for a beer with party workers in Sydney on May 4, 2025. (AFP/David Gray)
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hen Australian podcast host Nigel Marsh booked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for an interview on his show, "Five of My Life", he expected a surge of listeners due to his guest's high profile and the fact that an election was looming.
Instead, his audience numbers came in at half their usual level.
"I was expecting a bump in the figures," said Marsh, who first posted the 35-minute sitdown in the lead-up to the last election, in 2022, and again three weeks before Saturday's vote which returned Albanese to power. "Truth be told, I was surprised that the listener downloads for the prime minister were noticeably lower than for other popular culture figures."
A campaign dominated by podcasts, TikTok and other non-mainstream media was widely credited with US President Donald Trump's win last year.
But an attempt by Australian politicians to do the same fell flat in 2025, according to publicly available data and an analysis of social media activity conducted exclusively for Reuters.
Australia's 2025 election was its first where all major party leaders went on podcasts and ran personal TikTok accounts.
But voters largely tuned out of online political discussions after the campaign began in March and particularly since Trump sent geopolitical shockwaves by announcing sweeping tariffs on April 2, the analysis shows.
