When Politics, Meets Gaming
In less than a month and a half we have seen two prominent politicians stream on Twitch, while playing a 2020 rising star game, Among Us. Both Democrat US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Canadian NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, have made waves and created incredible media hype with their new digital hobbies.
With a common trend in more recent years being politics having a large struggle to attract the youth vote, you can see where the decision to stream on gaming’s largest platform, would help with that effort.
With using the popularity and large player base of Among Us, this move could help develop a deeper connection with younger minds in the digital space to think more about politics.
On her first stream, Ocasio-Cortez was averaging 325,161 concurrent viewers (CCV) with her largest spike of 426,109 viewers happening only after being live for 1 hour. Most of these viewers were watching her run around and complete those crew tasks for an average of 60 minutes. The stream on October 21st, 2020, was certainly timely, coming exactly only 2 weeks prior to the United States General Election. An election that Ocasio-Cortez was running to retain her place in the United States House of Representatives.
On the same day as that stream, she saw her largest uptick in search results according to Google Trends. With countless articles being written about the new found hobby.
Following in the footsteps and hailing from the north, New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, also took to Twitch to show off his streaming chops. Playing Among Us once again, with Ocasio-Cortez, as well as some of Twitch’s largest creators like xQc and Myth. The 41 year old Singh was having a blast. Lying when he was the imposter and trying to help his crewmates get the win.
Receiving a lower audience than Ocasio-Cortez, Singh still had an incredible performance during his first stream. With an average of 18,122 CCV with his peak viewership of 26,409 being within the first 30 minutes to hour of the broadcast. These numbers putting Singh right into the ranks of a lot of Twitch Partners within a day of starting an account.
The NDP Leader however received similar search traffic to his democratic confidant. Seeing a sizable uptick at the beginning and during his stream.
The takeaway from all of this, is that there is certainly a push in the camps of politicians, to be more engaged with digital culture. We have seen in the past politicians using streaming platforms to showcase different events, but bringing a social element, like gaming, viewers can connect with these figures on a more personal level. Who will be the next key political figure to join the Twitch craze?
