Why can't YouTubers win elections?

[@Marylandbrony]

I think this is JJ’s subtle way of saying “No I’m not running for office”.

[@Olafmikli]

The funny thing is that he'd probably be pretty good.

[@Marylandbrony]

@@Olafmikli For one thing he’s appears to be the from moderate wing of the Conservative party. But his views on Quebec would probably keep him out the national leadership and depending on where he lives he would probably lose to a liberal or NDP candidate.

[@danielalmeida7382]

@@Marylandbrony he lives in actual Vancouver. So his chances are even smaller

[@Marylandbrony]

@@danielalmeida7382 Telling from an earlier video, He seems to live in New Westminster which an NDP riding that hasn’t had a elected a Conservative MP since 1993.

[@mustafasoylemem2490]

He said the other guys chose wrong districts to run. He is a moderate with appeal for both right and left. He could succeed.

[@davidmargarita77]

You forgot the largest KZbinr to have ever run for elected office, British KZbinr Tom Scott (whom has a subscriber count of around 4 million) his channel is mostly general interest and “questions you never knew you had answered” stuff. He ran for the city of London riding in the 2010 UK parliamentary election and gained around 0.2 percent of the vote. The only reason he ran was as a result of losing a bet on who would win the super bowl back in 2009. He donned the persona “Mad Cap’n Tom” during the election, and ran on eliminating taxes on rum, and schools giving classes in swordsmanship

[@guylikesthings]

And he only got 0.2%? I want drunken sword fights in the streets everywhere I go.

[@vulpes7079]

Why wasn't he elected? I've lost all faith in Britain

[@guylikesthings]

@@vulpes7079 You had faith in Britain?

[@henriquejambu]

I was gonna say!!! Mad Cap’n Tom beats everyone else

[@davidmargarita77]

@@guylikesthings Another one of his campaign promises was to get a massive roll of duct tape to fix "Broken Britain" (Fix Broken Britain was a conservative slogan at the time)

[@windwind3170]

Imagine being the voter saying: "Oh, I voted for this guy because he makes funny pranks on KZbin"

[@Edelinejb]

That would be most of pewdiepies fans

[@aeroslythe6881]

Honestly, I’m encouraged by the fact that people find that embarrassing

[@TheSnakebite10153]

I think this phenomenon just shows how clueless a lot of the political side of KZbin is when it comes to what your average person in any country believes. This can also explain how so many candidates that are usually the most Right wing or Left wing candidate running will have such ferocious support online and then it doesn't translate into actual votes. Eccentric people have always dominated political discourse on this platform, and there are only so many of them in the real world.

[@ItsJustMe0585]

I think the issue is that the average voter is a moderate, but moderate political views don't really garner much success on KZbin, because they don't bring controversy. They don't get the smackdown from existing commentators that raise their own channel's viewership. However, even among the more radical channels, it would depend how you present yourself and what your content is, how well you'll appeal off the platform. If Steven Crowder ran for president (I know it's not an American by birth so he couldn't), he would be trounced because older Republican voters would see him as a provocative jerk, even if they agree on his views. On the other hand, Ben Shapiro is respectful, good at debates, dresses in a nice suit and tie, and very tame with his rhetoric, but possibly more right leaning than Crowder. Nevertheless, he could get the electorate to see him as a politician and gain more steam. ... Then still lose because he's in LA and Jewish. :P

[@ItsJustMe0585]

@Ꞅeaᵹhán Ó Laochꝺha Yup. Echo chambers with international viewership really mess with one's self-awareness.

[@dstinnettmusic]

@@ItsJustMe0585 I wouldn’t describe Shapiro as good at debates or respectful. He uses buzzwords and gotcha questions but he is generally not all that well informed.

[@ItsJustMe0585]

@@dstinnettmusic Maybe, but I do think that is the general perception of him to those that share his views. He's self-aware enough to know to tone things down and come off like a good-ole-boy if he were in front of an older, religious-right-wing audience, and to be condescending only to the progressives he takes on, when in front of a room of young Republican university students. He never changes his views or talking points, but he does change his presentation depending upon the crowd. That goes a long way, so long as you don't overdo it (like Hillary Clinton putting on the southern belle accent when in the south) which can come off as pandering

[@ItsJustMe0585]

@@dstinnettmusic Heck, I know a lot of liberals who watch Shapiro, even disliking his opinions, because it is the easiest way to digest what the right believes. I know folks on the far right who loathe the existence of people like Crowder, because they see him as everything wrong with conservatives.

[@AJX-2]

I think it's still pretty impressive that a random KZbinr managed to get 9 percent of the vote in California.

[@CharlieQuartz]

I'm not familiar with his channel but by JJ's description it sounds like he was the most politically educated of the group. I hope that's reflective of future campaigns and it doesn't devolve to popularity.

[@dharmani_youtube]

@@CharlieQuartz meet Kevin did have a solid plan but people with multiple policies rarely win elections. People rarely vote for drastic change even if it's good

[@TimThomason]

He got second place. California recall rules must've discounted the voters who voted not to recall Newsom, because I would think that a Democrat (which Paffrath is) would've won with around the same percentage.

[@JasperLane]

The funny thing is the guy right above him, Larry Elder is kind of a youtuber as well. Now he has a history of being a conservative talk show host, and while his history started before youtube he has been on the platform and has a sizable audiance. The California recall election was his first actual stab at politics and as you can see he dominated everyone else, despite having less then half of Kevins audience.

[@SuperSMT]

Yeah 9% is like ridiculously high considering he's a youtuber

[@splitinfinitives]

You touched on it a bit in your discussion of failed candidacies of British youtubers, but I really think that that we can't undersell how important the party label is to the failures of almost all of the youtubers you mentioned. At the end of the day, Count Dankula ran as a UKIP candidate in Scotland in 2019 despite the fact that A. UKIP has never been popular in Scotland B. UKIP has been more or less dead since 2017 C. The party's leader, Nigel Farage, started a new party (then, the Brexit Party) and took UKIP's voter base with him. In the case of your Canadian friend, he ran as a PPC candidate in a safe Liberal riding. To me it seems pretty clear that these (non-American) cases have nothing to do with the candidates being youtubers so much as them not standing for a party that was ever going to win.

[@JJMcCullough]

Agreed.

[@jameskowanko7574]

@@JJMcCullough Also when Dankula ran for the libertarians in Scotland, the libertarians are basically non existent in that country. His one run for mp like doubled the libertarian vote share in Scotland.

[@matthewmcgowan5774]

Yeah, Count Dankula isnt widely known at all in Scotland (I for one hadn't heard of him until a few months ago), his KZbin following (I imagine) generally comes from elsewhere. It also doesn't help that he's running as an extremely far right candidate in Scotland (a pretty left wing country) and in a pretty left wing SNP stronghold.

[@Croz89]

@@matthewmcgowan5774 Pretty much all his fame is a streisand effect from the arrest. I'm willing to bet he would not be nearly as outspoken or as right wing had the salute incident not been acted on, and would probably have remained an obscure minor KZbin personality. The heavy handed response caused him to become way more political.

[@natebox4550]

@@matthewmcgowan5774 I’d say he is mostly popular in America.

[@karlottobenz]

As of June 9th 2024, there is at least one exception to this video. KZbinr Fidias Panayiotou stood in the european parliament elections as and independent candidate and was elected as an MEP for Cyprus with 19.36% of the vote

[@KhAnubis]

With the point you make near the end, part of me wonders how well as local KZbinr could do in wherever they’re from (e.g. a Maryland-based KZbinr who talks about stuff in Maryland doing well in Maryland)

[@LucasBenderChannel]

Hm, probably better but still not good enough? Also, are there any of these kinds of KZbinrs who are overly popular in their communities? Aren't they usually confined to being local oddities?

[@Chocolatepain]

I think Robert Dyer lost the council seat

[@sri4116]

There is a youtuber (a youtube journalist to be precise) from telangana state of India who talks about the local issues of the state, especially corruption by the local state government. Recently he ran for the graduates seat ( an upper house seat in which only graduates are allowed to vote) from his local district and finished 2nd, behind the ruling party candidate. To be fair to him, he lost to the daughter of a former pm and it is also alleged that the ruling party bribed the voters to vote for them (pretty common in some places here). So good enough for him i guess.

[@NuncNuncNuncNunc]

No one is looking for candidates on youtube. A single community parade will attract more relevant attention than a dozen videos. An endorsement from some prominent local figure is easily worth tenfold that. Speaking for US elections, it's a game rarely won by breaking the rules.

[@baconsarny-geddon8298]

KZbin is just a very different beast to politics- On KZbin, controversy is good; It's incentivized; The watch-time of people who hate-watch you, because of the edgy tweet you made, have exactly the same CPM (and give you the same income), as the watch-time of people who love you, and agree with your every opinion. But politics is the opposite- Controversy is political poison; Even people who agree with ALL your policies, may bail on you and decide to vote for the other guy, based ONLY on a single controversial Tweet that annoys/offends them enough.

[@EmperorTigerstar]

My immediate guess is regardless of ideas you may have, you still need some sort of political experience to be able to be shrewd enough to campaign well and anticipate whatever tricks an experienced politician would use against you. A sad but true reality.

[@eaglebearer]

Its not political experience. It's about being in the establishment. If you're not part of it, then you're out.

[@knightshade2654]

@@eaglebearer I feel like the past decade has sort of proven you wrong. We have seen waves of populist movements across the West.

[@eaglebearer]

@@knightshade2654 And what are the results? Saying that we've seen movements doesn't actually mean anything has changed.

[@very025]

Donald Trump moment

[@knightshade2654]

@@eaglebearer The GOP has heavily changed its identity under Trump, being far more opposed to corporations and interventionism. National populists parties are still strong across Europe, with even Sweden, an incredibly left-wing country, having one. The next Brazilian president will either be a re-elected right-wing populist or a famous left-wing populist. Politics has definitely changed in the past decade.

[@orestvoloshchuk6834]

Over in Belarus a KZbinr and anti-corruption activist Sergei Tikhanovsky ran for president in 2020 and gained a lot of traction. He was quickly disqualified and later jailed for good measure which means that at least the Belarusian government thought he had a real shot. It’s a similar story with Alexander Navalny in Russia. The thing that sets them apart from the examples you mentioned is that Navalny and Tikhanovsky were primarily political activists from the start who used KZbin as a tool to get around their state controlled media, not primarily KZbinrs who decided to give politics a try.

[@lkrnpk]

Even more so with Navalny who was a politician already before KZbin, I don't know that much about the beginnings of Tikhanovsky before he started to drive around the country, but clearly he was not involved in big politics before his KZbin channel, Navalny was though

[@EriniusT]

tbf some of the youtubers JJ mentioned were essentially political too

[@RisXXX]

Ha ha ha ha Navalny is elredy taking part in all sort of elections and he never got more than 1 percent

[@orestvoloshchuk6834]

@@EriniusT That is true, but their political activism rarely extended past opinion journalism. Politics requires much more, fundraising, organizing, establishing local chapters, building relationships with other groups, etc. Someone like David Freiheit may have a decent number of people tuning in to agree with him and hear his take, but how many of them would take to the streets for him?

[@Debre.]

@@RisXXX Navalny got 27.2% when he ran for Mayor of Moscow, that's pretty damn significant. And while yes it's true that Moscow doesn't represent all of the country, he still got 16.6% in the district of Troitsk which is only nominally a part of the city & is in fact not that different from any random area of Western Russia. So to say that he is a perennial 1%-er is a gross understatement of his electoral record.

[@hexaltheninjawow9531]

I think many can argue that Niko Omilana actually succeeded instead of failing. Yes, he didn’t do very well but he succeeded in his goals. He wanted to prove that it was possible to shake the system and get into the top 5 in the elections, doing the unheard of. Which he did, and with unconventional tactics and a joke campaign which makes it a lot more impressive. I think his campaign was more of a proof of concept rather than an actual try at winning, one that worked quite well

[@davidv2002]

yeah he only got beat by the 4 major parties and he even beat one of the major parties (the lib dems) in a constituency. I see it as a win for him, a successful failure

[@user-lk4jd5yc8d]

Top 5 don’t mean much when it’s only 2% of the entire votes.

[@kadennelms8419]

@@user-lk4jd5yc8d I’d argue it means Amit especially in a city like London. The countries mega city with a 4 party system. 5th especially against Fox, who had £5 million. It’s quite an accomplishment. He even got a second preference vote from the Lib Dem candidate.

[@avian972]

Yea he was the biggest person not in a major party, and he beat some other parties people thought would do well. He also said that he wouldn’t become mayor if he managed to win and would resign immediately so I don’t even know if he (and fosh was doing the same thing but because he wanted young people to vote) counted as someone running for office

[@avian972]

@@kadennelms8419 I bet a lot of libdems put him 2nd because he was young, which that party likes

[@benjaminnemelka6484]

Tom Scott ran as a pirate for a seat in parliament because he lost a bet, and Noel Gallagher voted for him. So that might be the most successful KZbin candidate ever

[@johkupohkuxd1697]

Legendary

[@austinhernandez2716]

Wrong, because he was barely a youtuber at the time. Nobody knew he was. This video is about popular youtubers.

[@benjaminnemelka6484]

@@austinhernandez2716 ok buddy

[@theobuniel9643]

@@benjaminnemelka6484 He’s telling the truth though. Tom Scott didn’t fully become an established KZbinr until 2015/16.

[@sollamander2206]

My fear is that the only level that a celebrity can enter politics is at the national level so that we end up with Keemstar vs Hasan for president in 2040

[@johnarbuckle6583]

Mother of God…

[@sanjarsocool]

President Logan Paul launches a national diss track war or Prime Minister KSI lol 😂

[@freddiesimmons1394]

Why would it be only at the national level

[@JJMcCullough]

@@freddiesimmons1394 I was actually going to discuss this in the video, because I agree. Since KZbinr subs are broadly dispersed, it logically follows that they should, in theory, do best with the broadest electorate, which would be something like running for president or PM.

[@freddiesimmons1394]

@@JJMcCullough but wouldn't there, by the nature of randomness, be pockets where the support for the youtuber be dense entirely by accident? And even just proportional to the broader electorate (also by accident)?

[@homebrewdchannel]

Because they keep forgetting to say "Smash that voting ballot!!!"

[@MatanVil]

"Pokémon Go to the polls"

[@cpegg5840]

+Matan Vilensky Thanks for recalling to my mind that absolute cringe. Cheers.

[@candicoated2001]

"Before I continue this speech, 92 percent of you haven't voted for me.

[@thejustifier6602]

The biggest issue is that online followings don’t translate to local electoral success. Even if the KZbinr has a decent online following, the average voter probably has no idea who they are.

[@Laz3rCat95]

This. Especially since more older people vote than younger people, and the younger people are the ones who are more likely to know the KZbinrs in the first place. The older people will instead vote for other people they are more familiar with, and since the younger people don't vote as much, the KZbinrs don't end up getting many votes.

[@newwaveinfantry8362]

I think someone like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson are so big that they actually have a chance at winning a seat, however Ben has already stated that politics is a dirty game and that he has no interest in being part of it.

[@carlramirez6339]

Ukraine has shown us that a comedian can. The USA has shown us that a reality TV star can. It probably is just a matter of time before a KZbinr wins an election, since KZbin has plenty of content creators specialising in comedy or reality videos.

[@karlshorstzwei]

Zelenskyy had ties from that part pf the political establishment who left the PoR but weren't nationalist enough for the nationalist parties. Trump, meanwhile, has been involved as a donor in politics for years before that speech.

[@joaotess2562]

In Brazil, there has actually been quite a trend of political yotubers being elected, almost exclusively on the right wing. The most noteworthy of these figures is the now state legislator Arthur "mamãefalei" do Val, a youtuber who built his career by making videos of him going to left wing protests and taunting the protesters with right wing catchphrases. He was elected to his position with an incredible amount of votes, the most out of any candidate if I'm not mistaken.

[@steakismeat177]

I’d imagine it is easier for youtubers who don’t speak English in their videos to be elected because your audience is more likely to be heavily concentrated in your local area compared to English speaking youtubers who are more likely getting viewers from everywhere.

[@JJMHigner]

That's quite frightening to say the least.

[@glittie4939]

@@steakismeat177 I feel like that's also to do with elections to the Brazilian chamber of deputies not being district-based

[@andresherrera5247]

sad

[@jacques2368]

Brazil is based

[@zobristen]

I think it is important to note that the mentioned London Mayoral candidates, at least Max Fosh, underlined that he didn't participate in the elections to win but instead to grab the attention of youth voters who would be incentivised to vote for the jokes sake. Since you can rank candidates in London Mayoral elections and small candidates' votes are recounted according to their ranking of serious candidates, people who went out to vote for the youtubers would actually seriously participate in the elections. So their gimmicks probably helped increasing youth participation in the election.

[@dudeman3606]

Yeah, that's what I got from it too, they did it to be entertaining and to spread awareness of why younger people, if able, should vote. They made it very obvious they weren't seriously in it to win and I feel this video is a bit negative about their efforts and reasons "one consistent theme uniting all of their respective failures, seems to be that almost all of them made enormous strategic mistakes when it came to deciding which election they should run in. Born from apparently assuming that their KZbin audiences were somehow a representative sample of all voters everywhere."(10:23) and he goes on to say it would have been better for them to run in an election with a matching demographic to their audience. For these London Mayoral candidates at least, their audience was younger then the whole election demographic but that was the point, their audience was teens/young adults and those are the people who are less likely to vote at all. Though I feel it is important to say, this video does thoroughly go over and explain a fair bit of history, and reason for failure in these cases which is what the video is about and it does so in an informative, overview of the topic.

[@JJMcCullough]

There are lots of examples of silly candidates who wind up having a big impact. I am a bit skeptical of a theory that says no matter how many votes they got, they were still successful just because they weren't taking it that seriously. I think if they had won a lot of votes, people would have held them up as proof that social media stars can mobilize the youth vote. Is there any hard evidence youth participation in the election actually increased in any substantial way because of them?

[@spookygloberotter05]

@@JJMcCullough as far as I know no polling is done for age turnout in the London mayoral election, but I do hope Fosh was successful in his goal. It was noble.

[@maxattack3853]

@@JJMcCullough I don't know about calling them successful, but they clearly weren't running to win. I believe it is very possible they ran just to increase youth attention on the race and get the world focused on the race(an also their youtube channel)

[@Cereal_For_Lunch]

@@JJMcCullough as a representative of that demographic who actually voted in the 2021 london mayoral election, this year was the most engaged I’d seen my friends and others my age in politics, actually seriously considered who they might vote for and why. I do think that was in part down to Niko, Max, and another guy called Lawrence Fox (d-list celeb/actor here in the uk, ran on a right wing populist platform)

[@kata_zonda]

Here in Argentina a financial youtuber, Ramiro Marra, just got got elected last month into the Buenos Aires City legislature as part of the libertarian La Libertad Avanza party, so that's something.

[@h0ser]

a foreshadowing of today

[@kata_zonda]

@@h0ser quite the upgrade since then lol

[@franrobert80]

In the future we will have Elbuni as senator

[@LordEdmund1973]

I think there’s two big reasons: 1. Generally speaking, having more extreme political views is better for getting more attention online, but can be terribly handicapping in real life politics. It can also limit who you can and can’t run for; Freiheit ran for a party on the political fringe in a section of the country where he was never going to win. 2. KZbinrs may not necessarily have been involved in local politics before blowing up on KZbin. A huge part of working your way up in politics is meeting local party figures and getting involved in a political party. Even so-called “outsiders” like Trump have been hugely involved in politics before running, with his active donating and lobbying. Not having a party backing means you’re without a strong local infrastructure, making it incredibly difficult to win a district against party machines. This is why I think it would be different for you, JJ. For one thing, you have fairly mainstream centre right views largely in line with the Conservative Party, a major party, and seem to have some friends and connections within the Tories and the BC political establishment.

[@kadennelms8419]

I’d say J.J is more political commentator who likes doing the videos for fun. He’s more of a politician than a KZbinr I think.

[@Lycaon1765]

Except he lives in Vancouver. Conservatives wouldn't really wing in Vancouver lol.

[@Isaac-se4cx]

​@@kadennelms8419 I would absolutely hypothetically vote for JJ, but I think in the spirit of youtubers & their fans "knowing their own limitations"... I'm guessing political commentator and politician have very different job descriptions. :P There's probably a little overlap, but I wouldn't assume the skills & networks required for one would necessarily translate well to the other. Think "soccer player" vs. "soccer commentator".

[@emperorarima3225]

He doesn't speak French lol

[@newwaveinfantry8362]

@@Lycaon1765 The liberal party in BC has actually absorbed the Conservative party and has become center to center-right. They have a good chance of usurping the NDP provincial leadership next election.

[@PakBallandSami]

Being a KZbinr is like being a actor who only play minor roles he is well know but not that poplar and people don't take him seriously imo

[@ItsJustMe0585]

Eh, I don't think so. They often get more views than actors and have a closer audience. But, they are viewed worldwide, so that, maybe 20 mill consistent viewership is split among a few billion people, rather than your voting district of a couple million. Proportionately, no one knows you.

[@genderfluids6448]

Canada elected a drama teacher, US elected a man with alzheimers. Not saying youtubers would be good politicians but this high horse belittling Yotubers in the comments is absurd.

[@ItsJustMe0585]

@@genderfluids6448 Canada elected the son of one of the most prolific politicians in recent Canadian history. The US elected and old Alzheimer's patient only because he wasn't Trump.

[@itzzausty]

@@ItsJustMe0585 I feel like that just shows how bad Trump was

[@waynejohnson1786]

@@itzzausty And the fact Trump was elected only shows how bad Obama was. And the fact Obama was elected only shows how bad Bush was. And so on…

[@washingtonradio]

The false impression is YT subscribers and popularity means a person is particularly well known and popular in their local area. As noted by JJ YT is worldwide so I can watch content created by someone in Asia, Australia, Europe, etc. where I do not live. For some content I do not pay that much attention to where the channel is based even if it rather obvious to viewers.

[@maddie9602]

I would also keep in mind that big on KZbin doesn't necessarily translate to general fame. Most people in this comment section know who Pewdiepie is, sure, but do our parents? Our grandparents? I think we might overestimate how famous KZbinrs actually are. Donald Trump was a solid B-list celebrity before he ran for president. Most people at least vaguely knew who he was. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a major movie star before he ran for Governor. Even the biggest names on KZbin aren't actually that famous off-line.

[@JCPRuckus]

@@maddie9602 - To reinforce your point... I only know *the idea* of who Pewdiepie is. I've never watched any of his stuff, and I wouldn't know him if I saw him. So even his relatively massive KZbin fame doesn't mean much. Like, what percentage of KZbin's total viewers are his 30 million (or whatever subscribers)? And how many would actually vote for him in a serious election? I mean, I know Trump got elected mostly by saying stupid stuff. But some of that stupid stuff was what some angry people had been waiting for someone to say. I don't think that just any brand of stupid stuff can work the same way.

[@baulderos1950]

@@JCPRuckus its 100 million btw

[@JCPRuckus]

@@baulderos1950 - I don't care what the number is. You're just reinforcing the fact that having an audience on KZbin doesn't mean that anyone outside of that audience knows anything about you. And I didn't even cover the question of how many of those subscribers are too young to vote, or people with multiple accounts, or bots (paid or unpaid), or other types of hangers-on trying to piggyback his audience for views... None of which are helpful for winning an election, because they aren't real people, who really like you, who can really vote for you. They all fail at least one of those criteria for being a crossover viewer/voter, and that's gotta be at least half of his audience. Hell, over half of his audience might be too young to vote alone, much less the rest.

[@baulderos1950]

@@JCPRuckus yeah, I get your point

[@ostiedestrie2155]

Hi JJ, just want to note one thing. California's runoff electoral system is not unique. It's been used in Louisiana for more than 30 years; California only implemented it less than 10 years ago.

[@CCLFan1]

There's a slight difference between Louisiana and California. California has a top two system where after the primary, the top two candidates proceed to a general election regardless of what happens. In Louisiana their so-called jungle primary occurs on the day of the general election and then if one candidate gets over 50% of the vote there is no runoff, but if no candidate gets a majority, then the top two candidates proceed to a runoff election.

[@metroidnerd9001]

A lot of states in the South have Jungle Primary systems, but most only use it for Special Elections (see Georgia in 2020-2021) and (often nonpartisan) local elections. Louisiana is the only state that uses for all of their elections. Washington State also uses California's two-round system.

[@pharmesq]

California used the exact same runoff system, actually, to recall Gray Davis back in 2003. So saying California implemented it 10 years ago is simply wrong. The recall system was put in the California constitution back in the early 1900s. Now, our jungle primary system, that was lifted/inspired by Louisianas, but that's a totally different thing than the recalls.

[@metroidnerd9001]

@@pharmesq I don't know if the original comment was talking specifically about the recall system. Also, I wouldn't call the recall system a "runoff system" at all, because you don't need a majority of the vote to win the second round, and the two rounds are completely independent. Schwarzenegger won with only 48.6% of the vote. Runoffs (aside from instant runoffs) also take place at a separate time from the first round, where as both the recall question and the replacement question take place at the same time.

[@Aldo_raines]

In America, folks often use the term “carpetbagger” to describe a candidate showing up to run in a district that they’re not from. Carpetbaggers were northerners who moved to the south, post civil war, to pick up land on the cheap.

[@donutcrimeboss]

it's bc KZbinrs aren't as famous as we think, so they have less name recognition among the general pop. Only KZbin users care about you tubers

[@seneca983]

I'm surprised you didn't mention Carl Benjamin a.k.a. Sargon of Akkad who also ran for the European Parliament in 2019 but didn't get elected. I think one interesting comparison is successful businessmen suddenly entering politics. I feel that often they have more success than youtubers in enticing both party insiders and voters but then actually carrying out the job of a politician can often be more difficult than they expected.

[@nickfifteen]

Yeah, I was waiting for JJ to mention Sargon as an example, but honestly I'm glad to have learned about the rest of the lot as well.

[@southwestsaxon]

Ah yes the white supremacist carl benjamin from the lotus eaters channel 🙄 should have been banned from running for election.

[@bonda_racing3579]

@@southwestsaxon what are you huffing battery acid? Sargon isn't a "white Supremacist" or "fascist". He's center right. Or "Conservative liberal".

[@EZOnTheEyes]

Carl was such a conceited twat there was no way he could've garnered any sort of base. Between his r*pe threats of random dissenters to his race bait views. I think JJ was avoiding mentioning him to starve him of the much sought after grift infamy he desires. Bonus: The guy constantly confuses Sargon of Akkad with his nephew Naram-Sin of Akkad. For the first few years of his channel he used artwork of Naram-Sin

[@guylikesthings]

I feel Dankula was a better example, and not to mention how Sargon is somehow even MORE controversial than Dankula

[@andyn46]

I think people often underestimate how hard it is to actually win an election. I ran for city council this last year, and ended up losing. You have to have a lot of money, the person who ran against me spent $23,000 on her campaign and I’m a kid fresh out of college. I had a few political organizations contact me about aiding in the campaign but every one of them had the end goal of turning me into a career politician for cheap. The math makes sense, offering someone with nothing $5,000 will probably ingratiate them in the candidate’s mind for decades afterwards. You toss that same level of funding to an established politician it won’t mean a thing. I also kind of checked out when I started attending meetings of the city council to see what exactly I’d be doing, and those kind of crushed my soul. There was this crackpot organization that spoke at all three meetings I attended, who kept aggressively saying that the mayor be removed because he was elected illegitimately

[@justonemori]

dodged a bullet there

[@connergiesbrecht8634]

Looking at max fosh a little closer, we get a really int candidate. He was actively telling people not to vote for him. His mayoral run was more of a campaign to encourage people to vote in general and subtly educated them in why voting is important. All of this through the guise of his iconic shannangons.

[@FlorGeneva]

While not really the same thing, the current president of Ukraine is a stand up comedian and actor (he dubbed Paddington so that’s something). His election campaign was literally a tv show where he plays the president.

[@snorecore5447]

Ah that one is fucking great

[@forivall]

I mean, if we're talking about actors, there's Reagan and Schwarzenegger

[@JJMcCullough]

What was his campaign like?

[@salc8589]

Wasn’t he the guy who made a parody tv show about some Joe Schmoe becoming president, and after the show ended he actually did exactly that?

[@LordDim1]

@@salc8589 Yes. The show was called Servant of the People, and he played a comedian who ended up becoming president. Then, he formed a party named Servant of the People, actually ran for president, and won

[@Luka-uz8qe]

In Finland, the (classical) liberal political commentator KZbinr Tere Sammallahti got elected to the Espoo city council. It may seem remarkable at first, but becomes less so, when you see that he got elected to a city council on a list-type'ish based system where his party got nearly 36% of the vote. And, he personally got (only) 1804 votes out of total 130,000 votes cast. Still, of course, congratulations to him.

[@radicalcentreleftist6275]

Which party was he part of? Kokoomus?

[@Luka-uz8qe]

@@radicalcentreleftist6275 Yes, he's part of Kokoomus

[@radicalcentreleftist6275]

@@Luka-uz8qe That makes sense! I’m Canadian but if I lived in Finland I would vote for the Social Democrats. Who do you support?

[@Luka-uz8qe]

@@radicalcentreleftist6275 I'm not really a fan of any party, but I support Kokoomus mostly.

[@radicalcentreleftist6275]

@@Luka-uz8qe That’s cool! As long as you don’t support the Finns Party! Assuming that your Finish, I heard somewhere that a large portion of Finland can speak decent English, is that true? Or was I lied to?

[@smashingthreeplates2171]

Now, apparently Cenk Uyghur is now running for President. What a joke!

[@KingUnKaged]

I can't imagine a worse platform to start your political career than one that manages your outreach for you, encourages you to appeal to only people already primed to like and agree with you, and that let's you block, ignore, or avoid people who don't.

[@Christopher_TG]

When you put it that way, it starts to make a lot of sense why businesspeople and lawyers tend to be the most successful at entering politics. Being a business person or a lawyer is all about building connections in your local community with potential partners, clients, and customers. It's all about making them feel that you are a valued member of the community who offers something of real value. And the skills necessary to do that translate very well into politics.

[@Etchacritic]

A rising and controversial figure could also motivate more people to the polls (from the other side). Not everyone who watches TYT, or even this channel, watches because they agree with their positions, but because they have an interest in politics in general.

[@JJMcCullough]

I think that's very true. I am often surprised how many people on the left claim to watch Ben Shapiro.

[@Dman31619]

@@JJMcCullough I find anyone who expresses political opinion of any kind will inevitably get a lot of hate watching too ,they often make themselves known in the comment section.

[@dawas3610]

I do have to point out that the last and in my opinion most famous youtuber candidate like the British KZbinrs that do comedy ( Niko Omilana and Max Fosh) Did run for various reasons stipulating they wouldn’t be good mayors or desire to be the mayor of London. Max Fosh said in the BBC and his channel that he ran for mayor to increase the amount of young voters since it has been very low for the past decade and so on. I don’t agree it’s the best way to do it, buts it’s certainly an entertaining way for the audience. In my personal opinion I would not and have not voted for any candidate without any political experience due to the amount of seriousness the certain job entails.

[@oanaomg7298]

Max Fosh also ran to spite Lawrence Fox. Though I don't remember why he had a beef with him.

[@dawas3610]

@@oanaomg7298 That is very true.

[@onewisefrog5785]

that's also why niko ran

[@JJMcCullough]

It doesn't seem like they were successful even at raising awareness. There have been many instances in the past where "joke" candidates wind up doing surprisingly well, because their message resonates with a broader base. I'm a bit skeptical of a theory that says they were somehow effective regardless of how many votes they got. If they had gotten a lot of votes you can imagine people would have said it was proof of some significant populist movement among the young, etc.

[@CharlieQuartz]

@@JJMcCullough If his intention was to create an interest in voting with his young audience, that would not necessarily be reflected in the votes he got. The increase in youth votes would be located across many countries and districts and many voters may not even choose to vote for him but still be inspired by his message and vote for the candidate they want when they otherwise wouldn't have.

[@tomhalla426]

For a more recent case, Brandon Herrera almost won a Republican primary, losing the runoff by some 400 votes. Brandon is “The AK Guy”.

[@eerokivisto5103]

Finland held municipal elections in June 2021 and there were two youtubers who received success. They both ran as candidates for the right wing populist/far right Finns Party, with one of them being elected as a councilor in Vantaa and the other as a deputy councilor in Helsinki. The two run a podcast which is known for spreading all sorts of conspiracy theories and they were both kicked out of the party pretty soon after the election. Let's just say the two did not take their firing well.

[@ajarofmayonnaise3250]

Please tell me more! Iam curious.

[@eerokivisto5103]

@@ajarofmayonnaise3250 I don't really know where to start because I personally don't follow these guys actively. But what I do know is that the conspiracy theories they talk about include anything from aliens to 9/11 and flat earth. Recently they've been very active at spreading Covid related conspiracies, which includes anything from your usual anti-vaccine ideas to fantasies about "treason trials" towards government officials responsible for Finland's Covid response. Weirdly enough they also seem to be strongly pro-Israel which has been praised for it's vaccination program. Go figure. With the election, I think it's worth to point out that Finnish elections use a form of proportional representation so it pays to get as many candidates to run as possible. The decision to run for the Finns Party was reportedly done after a viewer poll. After the election, they started claiming that the election was rigged and started attacking party leadership for accepting the results. The final reason for their firing seems to have been the events of the Finns Party's convention later that Summer: one of the guys tried running for deputy leader, which he was prevented from doing due to unpaid membership fees. He obviously threw bit of a fit and accused the party of unfair treatment. He also caused bit of an incident by showing up to the convention with his personal "security detail", which consisted of two guys wearing bullet proof vests. They also claimed that the leadership election, which saw former deputy leader Riikka Purra being elected as party leader, as being rigged. Since being fired from the party, the two have publicly questioned the validity of decision. The only response from the party that I've seen is the party secretary going "Just watch their content" when asked about the firing by a reporter. Based on what I know, at least one of the guys has reportedly joined a party started by a former Finns Party MP who was similarly kicked out of the party over disagreements with party leadership.

[@ajarofmayonnaise3250]

@@eerokivisto5103 My man, wrote all that with correct grammar for a stranger in internet. Thanks dude :-)

[@maxfi878]

And one of the guys is also known for making parody rap videos before they started the podcast.

[@foodistgavrilo6636]

Didnt one finns party MP get kicked out for posting a george floyd meme

[@Canalbizarrof]

Brazil has 7 congressmen who came from careers in KZbin, and plenty of State Reps too. Not to count some bloggers and general influencer types. It probably has plenty to do with our specific characteristics as a democracy, but I think a big part of it is they're elected through Proportional Representation, instead of being based on geographical districts. I wonder if it's similar in other countries with PR, like Germany and Sweden. As you said, KZbinrs have very wide audiences spread out through many places. So it's more likely that a guy that has plenty of support generally can push on to get a seat, but not so much if a some other guy has a lot of support only in his immediate neighborhood. For example, if Cenk ran in a statewide election in California, I imagine he would still get around 7% of statewide support. However, I imagine the other candidates from his small district wouldn't be as statewide popular, and if he was awarded a proportion of seats based on his percentage of votes, he'd probably get elected and even get to bring a couple of other like-minded people in.

[@jonathancampbell5231]

Scotland has a mixed system where some votes are First Past the Post and others are Proportional Representation. Count Dankula went the PR route in his first attempt and he failed because UKIP isn't popular in Scotland in the first place.

[@HenriqueRMota]

You are absolutely right. The combination of statewide vote to elect House members + the low cost of entry, even within big parties, to join a election make the Brazilian system very amicable to KZbinrs.

[@timmytom694]

I imagine this might be because Brazilian KZbinrs that speak Portuguese will have the vast majority of their followers in Brazil itself, meanwhile all of the people in this video had fanbases that were spread out all over the world

[@oldmanlogan9616]

@@timmytom694 thats a factor too

[@prytooblack]

@@oldmanlogan9616 The fact that the vote is mandatory for people between 18 and 65 (and optional starting from 16) also means that it doesn't matter that their audience is young. If they're not kids they'll HAVE to vote.

[@currently_In_stealth_behind_u]

9.6 % is far from what I would consider a giant flop

[@haroldlawson8771]

Is for most high profile in California

[@nathanriver1556]

It’s actually less than 9.4%. Less than 60% of voters who turned out for the recall actually voted in the second question, so it’s closer to 5.6%, which is especially bad given he was the most high profile Democratic candidate.

[@sri4116]

There is a youtuber (youtube journalist to be precise), from the telangana state of India who talks on several issues, especially corruption in the state. Recently he ran for an election to the graduates seat (an upper house seat in which only graduates are allowed to vote) in the state, and finished second behind the ruling party's candidate. To be fair though the ruling party's candidate was the daughter of a former pm, and it is alleged that the ruling party bribed voters to vote for them. So good for him, considering the circumstances.

[@pasta1922]

another example is Niko Omilana , he is a UK KZbinr who has a huge following and he ran as London Mayor and came in 5th only lost to the Lib Dems Tories and the winner Labour. He was the most successful independent candidate ever ran for mayor

[@arthurjohnson9982]

JJ talked about him in this video.

[@goodlookingcorpse]

'Sargon of Akkad' also ran as a UKIP candidate when 'Count Dankula' did. He was distinguished by tweeting a Labor candidate telling her "I wouldn't even rape you", and then dealing with the controversy by patiently explaining that this was an entirely reasonable thing to say.

[@TheAlexSchmidt]

EDIT: I guess I was wrong I think he was actually in the Brexit Party and not UKIP, but otherwise this was right.

[@haroldlawson8771]

He was very right in that tweet it was a response to that Labour no laughing at male sucide

[@jamil5615]

@@TheAlexSchmidt it actually was UKIP

[@rivera147]

@@TheAlexSchmidt no, no he was not

[@goodlookingcorpse]

@@haroldlawson8771 Oh, did she? You should be able to provide a link to her doing that then.

[@nickmcnugget16]

"...or as a uh, " *winces* ".. *independent* " that might be the hardest I've laughed at something from this channel LOL

[@schad1738]

Niko's bid in London was more to show the world what young people were capable of than to win. His only goal was to break the top 5 which he succeeded in, beating out candidates who spent far more on their candidacy than he did.

[@jacobe1074]

As far as I know, in Australia we've never had a youtuber run for office. We did have a talk radio host (the baby boomer equivalent of a youtuber?) named Derryn Hinch who started his own party and ran for a Senate seat in 2016, which he won. He only served 3 years, losing his seat at the next election, but his party still exists and controls a few seats at the state government level. Australia's political scene is very top-down and it is essentially impossible for an upstart candidate to get a place on a major party ticket. We do however have a lot of minor populist kind of parties that occasionally win seats, and are running people like a celebrity chef and a football player at the next election - but no youtubers yet.

[@Bongthroat]

Until Jordies throws his hat in, lol

[@ms94]

Celebrities do run for major parties too. I know Peter Garrett was elected as an MP for Labor in 2004 and was a cabinet minister during the Rudd/Gillard government, only leaving after the 2013 election. Angry Anderson also ran as an MP for the Nationals but I don't think he was successful. I've heard talk about other celebrities entering the running for this year's federal election, e.g. TV presenter Erin Molan running for the Liberals in Eden-Monaro.

[@KJJ3DS]

How could you not mention Tom Scott’s run for parliament in 2010? I know it wasn’t serious, but I think you should have mentioned it.

[@MrTohawk]

I do think that Tom, if he really tried, could make it.

[@precisa_]

tom scott was barely a youtuber back then

[@CharlieQuartz]

@@MrTohawk While Tom would be one of the most trustworthy politicians, his expertise is mostly in linguistics and programming and the only politics I remember him feeling he can speak about is copyright law. Even if it turned out he had extensive political/economic understanding, he always seems to think anyone else is smarter or more capable than him and wouldn't be confident that he would be "the right choice" for whatever reasons. He's always sat in bow of the Dunning-Kruger curve.

[@gabrielarrhenius6252]

@@CharlieQuartz True, but I believe that if he ran for parlament or something similar and was serious with it and with a goal of fixing a policy or something similar about languages he would get many votes and hopefully succeed with getting a position. Basically if he was serious and wanted policies about language he would rock.

[@MikeApollo1]

My guess would probably be that KZbinrs have a much younger fanbases most of the time and so even though a KZbinr whos running for office has Millions of Subscribers only a small percentage are eligible to vote and depends how diverse there audience is only a some percentage of the eligible voters lives in the country or state the KZbinr is running on

[@rockyfalldownstairs]

And on top of that, their audience can and is often worldwide, or spread across a number of countries, regions, and cities who do not share the same elections.

[@Tinfoil_Hardhat]

And that's assuming their entire fanbase shares the same political views. Someone like Count Dankula produces non political content. Also while a lot of conservatives share some views with libertarians like Count Dankula, its not 1:1.

[@ms.antithesis]

actually i'd argue a lot fo the people mentioned, besides maybe the london 2021 one, had relitively older audiances..

[@joaouoj]

So, here in Brazil, there's this cop youtuber named Gabriel Monteiro who run and won to become a member of the city council in Rio de Janeiro in 2020, having a very expressive voting, at first you may think that shows an youtuber can easily get elected in Brazil, but I feel as his success comes from a mix of the old TV cop show hosts-type candidate, which have been very popular here, as his channel was mostly about complaints about the city's safety and infrastructure, and also the new politics movement based sole on internet propaganda that has grown since 2014, and which the current president was a big component of. I also think youtubers failing to win elections has mostly to do of not having enough support in the specific constituencies they are running in, a thing Monteiro had, as his videos were only about Rio.

[@milkbone69]

"Wow, some internet edgelord guy couldn't get elected, big shock" -- I busted out laughing, I have headphones on, the wife and dogs are now staring at me

[@SamAronow]

Without getting into too much detail, it would be very easy for a KZbinr to get onto a party list if sufficiently motivated- though much harder to get a high enough spot to get into Parliament if the party only gets 4-30 seats. I'm still not running.

[@vincenzorutigliano5435]

Sam Aronow becomes prince of the Sanhedrin

[@hakol5938]

Aronow for Council of Four Lands?

[@jonnyminogue]

While not a KZbinr, Honey Mahogany who was a contestant on season 5 on RuPaul’s Drag Race won a seat on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.

[@pyrotechnic96]

If any youtubers are to win elections I think it would be easiest in municipal settings. Lower turnout, smaller footprint, and less competition.

[@freakishuproar1168]

_"Count Dankula is a sort of celebrity figure within the, er... 'populist right', I guess would be the most diplomatic way of putting it..."_ xD As a lefty Englishman, I have to doff my hat to you for the smooth handling of that topic.

[@Zyphon]

Personally, I believe that the biggest factor is that these campaigns are just poorly-run and poorly-thought out from a logistical standpoint. A good number of KZbinr candidates seem to run as either a third party or independent. Conventional political wisdom says that that’s an uphill battle from the get-go. In any race (especially larger ones), your political affiliation plays one of the biggest roles in potential success. Just take a look at Count Dankula, who ran UKIP in the year Brexit AKA Reform stole virtually all of the party’s momentum. I suppose a lot of creators blindly believe their follower count is enough to overcome this challenge (either that or they’re not running to win). You can’t go into a race in a safe-Republican constituency and expect to win as a Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, etc. Some just run against popular incumbents. Do I even need to explain why this is a bad idea? Unless you have some huge revelation that will turn the tides of public opinion, you’re not winning that battle. As much as I believe incumbents should be challenged constantly, their political advantages are just not going to go away because you have millions of subscribers. Being a KZbinr can really only get you so far in a race. To most people, it’s just a job background. Having a high subscriber count may give you the impression of having more influence than your opponents in a race, but you’re really running a regular political race like everyone else. Sure, you might have an easier time getting press attention, but attention isn’t everything. There’s also funding, endorsements, volunteer outreach, etc. Once you look at it from that perspective, you begin to see how a KZbinr could win a race. A KZbinr candidate would be able to stand out better in a less-competitive race such as for a Soil & Water Conversation District (because it’s less-competitive, not because they’re a KZbinr). Not only that, but they’d at least have a chance if they’re not running against an incumbent/someone with huge party backing. It would be cool to see some KZbinr succeed against all odds, but that doesn’t change the fact that the odds are still against them. A well-planned campaign will beat an ill-conceived one any day.

[@ProfessorDenn]

I don't know much about being a KZbinr or a politician, but I imagine that it's a tough transition between a platform that automatically promotes your content and gives you a ton of useful demographic data to one where you have build your network completely manually.

[@spookygloberotter05]

you forgot Tom Scott! He ran in the 2010 general election for parliament as a joke pirate character, the same one he played to (unintentionally) win the 2008 University of York Students' Union presidency

[@JJMcCullough]

How did he do?

[@spookygloberotter05]

@@JJMcCullough he got 84 votes, but one of those was from the guitarist Noel Gallagher

[@pocarski]

Well there's a Russian youtuber who's very active in politics and ran for president in the last election... But being Russia, all he got was several attempts on his life and a prison sentence

[@yellowlightsyndrome9959]

We’re talking about navalny right?

[@deiansalazar140]

As a local political insider it's because you need the trust of the local party and at least some endorsements to be taken seriously by the media. Not establishment people don't worry, just local organizations or prominent Progressives or influencers. I'd love for Progressive KZbinrs to succeed, it's simply a manner of reaching out beforehand and taking candidate training to avoid the blunders KZbinrs have usually had. Game reviewers might actually be good at this regard, being good at stump speeches. You need to learn how to appeal to people's wants and needs and not alienate voters or come off as dedicated to your ideals and smart. Experience isn't a issue, competence is. Beyond your current job.

[@brenobarbosa4761]

A few KZbinrs were elected to Congress and state legislatures in Brazil in the 2018 election. Then many more were elected to city councils in the 2020 municipal elections. One of them is set to run for governor of the largest state in the country (with a population of 45 million) in next year's election and seems to have a decent shot. One of the reasons for this is that in the Brazilian electoral system, you can get votes from anywhere within a state in elections for congress and state legislatures. This makes it possible to win an election with votes that are geographically disperse.

[@TheMntnG]

internet =\= reality (in switzerland, you have to be from the district. outsiders can’t just move in)

[@CeeJayLerod]

I think equating subscriber counts with potential voters has one major flaw: not everyone subscribes to or watches a youtuber because they agree with them.

[@cyriljon5580]

As someone who lives in Californias 25th district, I can say Cenk didn’t win mostly because the fact that 25th district is very conservative and republican while cenk is very progressive.

[@cmcn6831]

Tom Scott lost a bet and ran in the 2010 UK Election as "Mad Cap'n Tom" and got a whopping 84 votes (0.2%)

[@thatotherguy8138]

My guess, before watching the entire video: 1) Party Politics. Voters in the West tend to vote for Parties over Individuals. Very few people in Canada could say "I voted for (Person)!", instead they would be able to say "I voted for the (Party Name)." So having "David Freiheit" on the ballot is not particularly meaningful as compared to the "PPC" beside his name. If Viva had "PC" beside his name, he would get more votes. If he had "BQ", even more votes. Etc. But "PPC" turns off most voters right now. Maybe that will change in the next election, but right now PPC is a Protest vote, and not even a normal Canadian protest vote. (which is either BQ in Quebec or Reform/Wildrose in Alberta) 2) KZbin is GLOBAL. Elections are LOCAL. I can't vote for Count Dankula because I'm not in Scotland. Hell, even if I was in Scotland, I probably wouldn't be able to vote for him - I'm in Canada, I can't vote for Viva because I'm not in his riding. That Kevin Guy has 1.5 million subscribers? How many are in California? Hell, if Pewdie Pie were to run for office somewhere, he might not have enough subscribers who are able to vote for him (ha ha his audience is 13yr olds ha ha i made the funny so you don't have to) to get him into office, and he's at what, 100m subscribers? 3) Credibility issues. I watch Viva, I like Viva, I'd probably vote for Viva. Viva is a lawyer. I wouldn't vote for Dankula, even though I like Dankula. I might vote for Sargon. For Dankula, I don't honestly know if he was serious about Politics or not. I'm not sure if HE was sure if he was serious for politics or not. Sargon, I think was serious about it, just inept at his first kick at the can. That Kevin guy doesn't look credible for me at first glance because I see him and I see a KZbin version of Jim Cramer and Cramer seems to be your typical self-promoting Talking Head, like Bill Krystol (the "I'm Wrong About Everything But I Keep Getting Invited Back On Talk Shows!" guy from the Iraq War era, who made a comeback as an Anti-Trumper). So I would probably immediately discount him as a political candidate simply because he's a KZbin Talking Head. Maybe I'd give him a shot now that I've seen more about him, but without that, he'd be dismissed almost immediately. 4) Lack of relevant skills. Yes, we all like to joke about Politics and Skills, but look at most Politicians - they have SOMETHING in their backgrounds that work in Politics. Lawyers, Businessmen, Non-Profit Organizers, the much-laughed but extremely useful at "Community Organizer". What does Dankula bring? What does Sargon bring? When I'm looking at two people to vote for, and one is a Comedian and one is a Lawyer... if I'm making a serious choice, I'm going for the Lawyer as my first choice, and only if the Lawyer turns out to be bad do I look at the Comedian.

[@andrewzebic6201]

There was an interesting one from an old celebrity in Australia called Peter Garrett. He was the singer in Midnight Oil. He was very popular and won a seat in parliament for Labor but quickly lost it after a failed scheme for improving national insulation

[@pluto6383]

I remember I had last heard about Dankula many times during his arrest and trial, but after his March 2018 conviction stopped hearing about him. When I finally randomly came across his channel a few months ago, I was shocked to see that his content isn’t nearly as political now as it used to be; he’s mainly focused on Absolute Mad Lads now.

[@ms.antithesis]

yea he moved his politics stuff mainly to his second channel, which is still very enjoyable to watch, highly rrecommend "My beef with seth rogan" because it's just funny how out of it moderate-left hollywood celebs are..

[@tomas3909]

here in chile there was a youtuber recently elected for congress for a far-right party, Johannes Kaiser is his name. There was some big controversy over his previous sayings and he ended up leaving the party.

[@joshualeduc5213]

are you talking about kast's party?

[@tomascinnsealeach9979]

J.J looks a lot like my mother in the 80's, especially the mustache!

[@lkrnpk]

he looks like a gay ice hockey player from the 70s who he most likely just is though, only problem at those times you had to remain in the closet, no love

[@crystalbarnes4876]

I think the fact that Paffrath got over 700k votes is still very impressive, considering the number of Democratic candidates in the election and a lack of consensus by Democratic voters on whom to vote for in the case of Newsom's defeat (though yea, I don't think any Democratic was particularly worried that Newsom would actually lose)

[@FredoRockwell]

Great video! I listened to your interview with Chad and Steve and I realized I don't write comments after most of your videos because I just assume they will get lost in the thousands of comments you get. But I actually enjoy and value then all - thank you! Also thank you for introducing me to Chad and Steve's podcast - I love it!

[@LucasBenderChannel]

+++ Yep. This! Their podcast is great! (I've even gone to subscribe to Steve's woodworking channel, even though I only ever work with wood if I really have to. 😃 Might be a hobby worth picking up!)

[@Fluffymonkeyem]

The election here in California was really confusing for a lot of people. I've never had to vote this way before. Wether to remove someone and then who to put in. A lot of people I know just didn't want a KZbinr as governor, especially in such a stressful time of crisis. KZbinr is still not seen as totally professional by some people and definitely not something that should lead to a political career. In Paffrath's case he was also 29, which I heard some people say worried them.

[@joshualeduc5213]

true, but larry elder who was the biggest candidate on the recall side is also a youtuber with same size as kevin

[@metroidnerd9001]

I think the other big reason Paffrath did so poorly is because most Democrats did not vote on the second question of the recall ballot as a way of protesting the recall in general.

[@georgiykireev9678]

In Dankula's case it also didn't help that every single article about him had "Nazi" in the title. Not the best PR

[@North49RC]

Your comment at 8 mins about "someone being good at one realm of life doesn't transfer to another realm" would also accurately describe most of the politicians that are voted or appointed to office. Voting is just a popularity contest, has nothing to do with who can do the job best. Every campaign no matter what party bases their platform on polarization of the populous trying to secure the side of majority. JT is a prime example of how its done, not surprised being who his father is. My two cents

[@jkarnold100]

Dancula is a good example of ‘my politics don’t define me’ I can’t stand his political views, but his non political content is some of the best. Specifically mad lads

[@microsoftpain]

Niko Omilana came 5th in his UK elections for London Mayor. That's pretty remarkable for a person with no political experience and a low campaign budget.

[@Emerald_Forge]

I hope it stays this way, 8/10 it's a joke run and the rest of the time they'd be horrific in any sort of position of power.

[@North49RC]

Power corrupts even the most well intentioned. Given none of these leaders do anything without advisors/influencers/lobbyists, it is not hard for anyone to fall into the cycle of corruption that plagues the system, not principally sourced from that said leader. The system needs to be restructured.

[@IkeOkerekeNews]

@Emerald Forge Why don't you run for office?

[@ms.antithesis]

Dank is a very politically sound person who was the only one running for his community over anything else. Whilst a lot of people say he was just running to get notoriety, if you look at his campaign vids he mentioned a ton of local issues. Such as the fact one of his local lakes was planning to be drained, which he wanted to put a stop to, he also wanted to lower council tax, and try and get police out of schools.

[@JJMcCullough]

Oh, I cannot believe I forgot to talk about Sargon of Akkad, Aka Carl Benjamin. Well, actually I can believe it, because I am not super familiar with the KZbin right-wing subculture, and I honestly thought he and Count Dankula were the same person. But basically, as an addendum, he is some other right-wing British KZbin guy, and he also ran for UKIP in the 2019 British election to the EU parliament. He was number two on the UKIP list in the South West England riding, where UKIP won 3.2% of the vote, so he also came nowhere close to being elected. It is worth noting that UKIP, though once a considerable force in EU elections in Britain, had become a fringe party everywhere in the country by 2019, meaning regardless of what you think about Benjamin, he is also an example of a KZbinr who simply made a terrible strategic decision in terms of how to go about running for office.

[@sixmill70]

I think another reason is just the massive spread of viewers all over the world. If you run for office and you have a million subs. Not only do those subs have to be in the age range of voting, they have to live in the same general area as you and in the same country.

[@alechenry1483]

California Voter here, all things considered Paffrather did fairly well. He beat all but one of the recall candidates. The other canidiatess being an incumbent Assembly Member, former governor of San Diego, and a former GOP Gov Canidiate. So his campaign was more success full than of nearly all of the other ones This limited success came from his specific policy proposals targeted to the big problems of California, which are homelessness and housing costs. The main reason why he didn't do so well is because of the political landscape of California . Being registered as a Republican is going to turn off most voters Paffrath went the route of registering as a Democrate which has it's own problems, mainly challenging Gov. Newsome within his party. Needless to say it's difficult to run a campaign without connections to a big political party. It's easy to dismiss the recall election because of the results. But some polls months before the election showed a successful recall causing the Governor to raise money and had other public figures to help him out. I didn't vote for Paffrath, I just found his campaigning intresting. Anyways thanks for another great video J.J.!

[@torrestheman_3808]

I thought J.J. was gonna finish this end this video with a announcement to run for Prime Ministre.

[@gerardacronin334]

You can’t do that. You have to become an MP first.

[@R.B.90]

It seems like a lot of these KZbinrs are on the Right. I'm sure JJ could do a video on that ideology as well. It's the counter culture crowd (which does exist on both sides). I think KZbin often create false popularity narratives where you think you are bigger than you are because you are beloved by your fans which only represent a tiny percent of what the voting populous thinks... and also even smaller since most those fans can't vote for you.

[@Tinfoil_Hardhat]

You're phrasing that as if the right is a small, minority of the population. It isn't. These youtubers can see where their demographics come from. Whereas Count Dankula is from Scotland, undoubtedly the majority of his viewers are from America. So it's not going to translate into actual votes. Plus he's a libertarian. That's not the first choice candidate for most right wing people.

[@joaomendonca3402]

You should talk about a Brazilian KZbinr called "MamãeFalei". He is very controversial and became congressist. This year, he is trying to win elections for governor from his state.

[@robbier6389]

I'm curious to see if Dr. Oz' Senate bid will follow a similar trajectory. He has much more of a following in the age ranges of most voters and has a degree of medical authority, but most of his public image is still from being "media famous" through an ability to appeal to a specific target audience.

[@lamikiminach9503]

Who willing dyes their hair nuclear waste dump neon yellow 💀😭

[@wiktoriagrochowiecka8930]

I have kind of an opposite example. In Poland in 2015 presidential elections, Duda's campaign was focused on being "down with the youth", partially through his unavoidable presence on the internet. It worked. He's still a president to this day.

[@mbogucki1]

You can thank the rural peasantry for his win more than anything.

[@wiktoriagrochowiecka8930]

@@mbogucki1 Yeah, you're certainly not wrong

[@Debre.]

2015*, there was no presidential election in Poland in 2016.

[@wiktoriagrochowiecka8930]

@@Debre. Right, sorry, my mistake

[@yaboi-km2qn]

most political youtubers and especially the ones who would actually try to run for office have really dumb really extreme views. No one outside of their viewer base would even think about voting for them, in the uk at least.

[@fortunatejeremy]

Sure, a KZbinr might have 5 million subscribers worldwide, but the key here is worldwide. The 5 million people don't all live in the area that enables them to vote for the KZbinr.

[@seamussc]

KZbinrs have hours and hours of recorded video and livestreams. It seems like anyone who records that much of themselves for public consumption is going to have a some yikesy foot in their mouth moments at some point, especially if they are streaming a lot. Everyone does this at some point or another, all people do, but the vast majority of us don't leave documented evidence of such moments. Those yikesy moments could likely be leveraged in perpetuity to sink their campaigns.

[@inversion9651]

That's probably a major aspect.

[@headstone9384]

This is true, but there's also the fact that "yikesy"/controversial statements aren't as radioactive as they used to be.

[@boise8843]

I may be bias as I voted for Kevin Paffrath but I think calling his campaign a flop is a little ridiculous. He was a Democrat going against an established Newsom with unlimited resources. As well as taking on a very popular conservative talk show host. The fact that he actually got 700,000 votes was impressive imo.

[@halkon4412]

I agree, he did better than anyone else in this video while having run for the highest office. I was surprised he got nearly 10%.

[@spikey_104]

Credit to Nico, he did do the best out of those not in the big 4 parties. There are also some actors who have run and failed recently but some of them do really well e.g. Reagan

[@christianfrederiksen171]

Love your political candidates videos! Is it alright if I make a request/suggestion for a future one? I'd love to see you do one about actors and musicians who've run for political office and failed. Wyclef Jean's run for president of Haiti, Cynthia Nixon's try for governor of New York, Laurence Fox's try for Mayor of London, Diane Neil running for a New York Congressional district, Kanye West's run for president etcetera etcetera. Would love to see you talk about some of them

[@a6blue853]

I think it also has to do with the fact that certain notable KZbinrs, like the most obvious example is Jake Paul, have made the label of being a KZbinr not something you take seriously and, in politics, there are plenty of voters who do take it seriously.

[@gerardacronin334]

“I do think it requires a bit more strategic, careful thinking”. JJ, December 2021. JJ is one of the most strategic, careful thinkers on KZbin, so I’m guessing he is considering entering politics himself. I think he would make a credible candidate.

[@qwertyTRiG]

I suspect that the main message of this video is that he's definitely not entering politics.

[@josemanuellopezgiraldez404]

Famous people who’s fans are not concentrated on the areas of which they run instead being distributed among the country and world.

[@PoliticsMadeSimple]

The best way for a KZbinr / Personality to become a politician is to start small, like an aid/advisor. Then slowly but surely get name recognition for working within politics and rising through the ranks but probably quitting KZbin entirely since it would look to older folk as “unprofessional.”

[@antonallen8972]

I have a case study to offer: Alexey Navalny. Whether he is a successful KZbin candidate, or a failure, in my mind is still to be decided, since he is pretty young (relatively speaking), and could still have a political career well into an older age bracket. What makes him a KZbinr, is the fact that KZbin is one of the only platforms in Russia, where people doing investigative journalism and campaigning independent of the Kremlin, and reach a wider audience (since distrust of cable TV is a big thing in Russia). His channel has 6.4 million followers, and his team still posts videos of them uncovering corruption scandals to this day. In 2013, Navalny would run for Moscow’s mayoral seat - his first election. At that time it is widely believed that Putin and the United Russia party thought that its best to let anyone run for office, in order to maintain the facade of democracy, since they believed that no matter what, a UR candidate or one of the systemic opposition candidates (opposing parties in the Duma which actually have back door deals with UR that promise cooperation) would win the election. But to everyone’s surprise, Navalny got 27% of the vote, with a turnout of 32%. This shocked the government, and they decided after this election to not let themselves slip up like that again, and I think it’s a fair assumption to make that ever since then, ballot stuffing amongst other tactics were utilized a lot more than ever before (really hard to collect data on these types of things). In 2018, Putin’s party used a fabricated case called the “Yves Rocher” case against Navalny (he used it indirectly), to make sure that since he was facing criminal charges of bribery on that case, he was locked out of running for presidential office in 2018. Around the time when Alexey announced that he is running for office (2016), is also the time that a special FSB task force was dispatched to collect intelligence on him, after which in August 2020, they poisoned him. Currently, because of that same Yves Rocher case, Navalny was sent to prison when he came back to Russia, after recovering in Germany. A lot of people see his move as stupid, since clearly he would’ve been arrested, but Alexey’s reasoning was that he is a Russian politician, therefore he can’t honestly do his job unless he goes back to Russia. However, interestingly enough, his team predicted that he would be arrested, and as soon as he was, they released a 2.5 hour documentary about Putin’s palace - which was built using 1 billion dollars worth of taxpayer money. The palace was made of marble, amongst other materials, had a casino, and a hookah lounge with a pole for strippers. The whole video is available on his channel, and has English subtitles. I’m also pretty sure it’s one of the most highly viewed videos in Russian, with over 100 million views.

[@haroldlawson8771]

He had the support of the cia

[@augustuslunasol10thapostle]

@@haroldlawson8771 everyone fucking says that about anyone in Russia who says fuck you to the system

[@The_Dude_Rugs]

There’s also the case of Sargon of Akkad, a particularly repugnant peddler of hot takes, who ran at the same time as Dankula for UKIP and essentially dealt the final death blow to his failing party with his own stupidity

[@bonda_racing3579]

Curious you watch dankula channel? Even tho he's friends with sargon?

[@The_Dude_Rugs]

@@bonda_racing3579 just because his politics are retarded doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy his less political content, besides I used to be in that sort of crowd before learning what the real world was like haha

[@bonda_racing3579]

@@The_Dude_Rugs Cmon man. Just because you changed your political views. It doesn't invalidate his. I agree with him on free speech and personal freedoms. And Disagree with him on feminism and all that. -I used to be hard right Trump supporter back in 2016 and all that bs crap (glad I got over it). But now I find myself in the middle of it all. Both aisles got their points but the same time their bullshit. Either way man thanks for giving me the time of day.

[@The_Dude_Rugs]

@@bonda_racing3579 I’m not trying to invalidate his opinions, just saying that I don’t agree. Same to you too mate

[@modder15]

It's called the curse of being "Too Online"

[@hastaman321]

I think another factor is that generally people tend to overestimate the reach that internet celebrities tend to have. You can have millions of subscribers and be well known within a community, but once you start to go outside that community that person becomes completely unknown. Considering most of the new content that reaches people tends to be pushed by algorithms based on what they've already seen, it is not uncommon for people to discover creators online who have been online for many years and have a large fanbase, but nevertheless would be quite obscure to the average joe.

[@Ray_Vun]

i don't think any prank youtuber would ever be able to make it to office, solely because the only people who watch prank youtubers aren't old enough to vote. and the people who are old enough to vote don't want someone who makes prank videos on youtube as their representative. but that also applies to a lot of youtubers in general. most big youtubers have young audiences. and a lot of that audience isn't in the same state or country as the youtuber. so the youtuber might be making tons of views, have tons of subscribers, but that doesn't count for much when most of those people can't vote for the youtuber

[@DeanmC261993]

Wouldnt actually someone notable and a good example be Alexei Nevalny? I guess you can’t really consider that political success in the traditional sense..or would that just make him the worse example?

[@GenerationZ313]

I definitely agree he's not technicallysuccessful but he certainly has gotten a lot of attention for himself both in and outside of Russia

[@nedisahonkey]

Its really interesting, there is a "#FreeNalvany" billboard in my suburbam neighborhood in Sacramento. There is a very large Russian diaspora population here do i assume that's why.

[@pavlotretiakov2130]

Well he's a politician that makes youtube videos. Not a youtuber who decided to become a politician.

[@TrueJole]

The second dudes name is literally freedom.

[@decadence8473]

It's very simple, JJ. The audience of KZbinrs is universal, while the majority of elections happens locally.