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On YouTube, left-leaning channels are growing faster than the right
Conservative content has long dominated politics on the platform. New data shows that’s beginning to change.
Kyle Tharp
April 3rd, 2025
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On YouTube, left-leaning channels are now growing faster than the right
YouTube has been a bastion of conservative outrage content and right-leaning programming for many years. Right-wing media channels like FOX News, The Daily Wire, and Prager U and individual creators like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder have built a formidable political echo chamber on the platform, growing massive subscriber bases along the way.
This fact was underscored in a Media Matters report published last month that looked at conservative media dominance in online long-form shows. That report used fascinating data visualizations to illustrate the asymmetry in audience between right-leaning shows and progressives’ much smaller efforts. While Media Matters looked at platforms like Rumble and Twitch in addition to YouTube, I wanted to look specifically at YouTube programming, as I’ve seen Democrats and progressives beginning to build audiences there. What I found was surprising: In Q1 of this year, progressive YouTube channels grew their audiences at a much faster rate than conservative-leaning channels. Let’s dig into the data…
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