Harris Campaign Sends Tim Walz to Millennial Male Voters

• Harris and Trump are working hard to win over young male voters.
• On Wednesday, Harris' Vice President Tim Walz appeared on a “World of Warcraft” Twitch stream.
• According to Statista, nearly half of eligible voters this election are Generation Z and Millennial voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris is sending her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, to empower a key group of voters for the upcoming election – young men.

On Wednesday evening, Walz appeared in a “World of Warcraft” Twitch stream. Blizzard's multiplayer online role-playing game was released in 2004 and is still very popular.

The livestream, which ran for an hour and a half, included a live feed from Walz's rally in Arizona alongside Twitch creator Preheat's gaming feed.

“GOP is the opposite of POG, and we are here to express POG,” said Preheat, who has over 51,000 Twitch followers and was the host of Wednesday’s stream. “POG” is internet slang for “clutch play,” and is a word commonly used by players in variations such as “POGChamp” and “Poggers.”

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign told Wired that Wednesday's livestream was part of its outreach to young male voters, who make up a large portion of Twitch's user base.

Twitch, owned by Amazon, is best known as a platform where people stream themselves playing games. The livestreaming service, citing internal data, said it averages 105 million monthly visitors and that 70% of its viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34.

This isn't the first time the Harris campaign has tried to reach this audience.

In addition to Twitch, Harris' campaign has seen ads run on gaming site IGN and at major sporting events such as NFL games. Geeks & Nerds for Harris, a pro-Harris organization, also hosted a stream in September to rally support for her.

Jonathan Aronson, a communications professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, told Business Insider that Walz's appearance on Twitch was an example of the Harris campaign “looking for alternative ways to reach younger voters.”

“It's a chess game. Both sides have to spend huge sums. Each side will spend it to try to motivate their supporters to vote and to get the small number of undecided voters to vote,” Aronson said.

Representatives for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

Walz's appearance on Twitch comes as the Harris campaign is increasing its voter reach. Early voting has already begun in several states, while Election Day is less than a month away.

Harris, for her part, launched a media offensive this week.

She appeared on Alex Cooper's “Call Her Daddy” podcast and conducted interviews with CBS' “60 Minutes,” late-night host Stephen Colbert and radio host Howard Stern.

For Harris, encouraging youth voting could be crucial to winning the November election. Data from Statista suggests that Generation Z and Millennials will make up around 48.5% of eligible voters in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

Former President Donald Trump also worked hard to strengthen the vote of young men.

In recent months, Trump has been busy entering the podcast scene, conducting interviews with Logan Paul, Theo Von, Adin Ross and Lex Fridman.

In his interview with Fridman that aired last month, Trump said podcast interviews gave him greater visibility and reach with voters.

“You have a great podcast. He is very well seen. And I'm sitting here doing this, a lot of people are watching it. And I do other things, and a lot of people see that,” Trump told Fridman.

“And I also go traditional, you know, there's traditional television that's getting a little older and maybe less significant, might be less significant, I don't know. But it’s changing a lot,” Trump added.