Podcast audience demographics in the U.S. are easily generalized by most in the industry: Relatively affluent, educated, and left-leaning politically compared to the whole U.S. population. But that easy characterization is changing as U.S. podcast listening expands.
That finding from Edison Research in a data release: The Evolving Demographics of Podcast Listeners: Political Affiliation.
That evolution is neatly packaged in a six-year timeline of podcast audience political profiling (see the graph below).
The respondent group in the study above consists of weekly podcast listeners, 18 years and older.
Edison sees this trend in its podcast ranking work:
“This shift in political affiliation aligns with changes we’re also seeing in the top 50 podcasts. Many conservative talk podcasts like Candace, The Matt Walsh Show, and The Ben Shapiro Show either debuted in the top 50 or moved up the ranks in our Edison Podcast Metrics Q4 2024 podcast ranker compared to prior quarters.”