Why Do All These Influencers Keep Losing Elections?

What Jack Schlossberg’s distant third-place finish in NY-12 teaches us about political creator marketing.

Jun 29, 2026

By Ryan Davis
Partner, People First

A smart piece in Wake Up To Politics made a simple point after Jack Schlossberg’s loss in New York’s 12th congressional district: Followers do not equal votes.

But we think the lesson is that attention isn’t the same thing as electoral power.

Jack Schlossberg had the biggest audience in the race: the most national press, the most recognizable name, and the kind of online presence that makes political reporters, consultants, and very online Democrats feel like something magical is happening. Then he finished a distant third.

Micah Lasher won and Alex Bores came in second. Both had far smaller online audiences, with far deeper ties to the actual district. They looked a lot more like the kind of candidates who win Democratic primaries in Manhattan: local, serious, and connected to the kind of voters who actually show up.

That doesn’t mean social media doesn’t matter, it means Democrats need to get much smarter about what kind of social media matters.

Attention gets you attention

Jack’s campaign is a perfect example of the trap campaigns fall into when they mistake audience size for political strength.

A large following creates visibility. It can generate press and make a candidate look culturally relevant, making a campaign feel bigger than it is. This can convince journalists, donors, and political insiders that a candidate has real momentum. But in a district election, most of that attention is politically useless.

The only audience that matters is the one that can vote, persuade someone who can vote, donate meaningfully, volunteer locally, or validate the candidate inside a community the campaign needs to reach. That’s a much smaller and more specific audience than “people who follow this person because they thought the goofy TikToks were LOL.”

People First’s analysis of the race shows the problem clearly.

Jack had more than 881,000 followers on Instagram, but only about 10% of those followers were in New York City and actually engaging with his content. Micah Lasher had about 8,500 followers. But his audience was far more geographically useful. More than a third of his likers were in New York City. His engagement rate was also dramatically higher.

Jack had massive reach. Micah had density. In a congressional primary, density beats reach.

The bigger the influencer, the less local the audience

This is something we see all the time in our political creator work. The larger a creator’s following gets, the harder it is for that audience to stay local, specific, and politically relevant.

This isn’t really a criticism of big creators. It’s just how social media works. A creator grows because their content travels beyond their original community. They pick up fans, spectators, journalists, haters, people from other states and countries, people who like their personality and style, and people who are there for “entertainment.”

That kind of audience can be valuable with fundraising, driving national awareness, shaping elite conversation, and letting a campaign punch above its weight in the media. But it’s not the same thing as a local base.

That was the gap in this race. Jack’s audience looked broad, young, heavily female, and culturally oriented. His audience interests leaned toward entertainment, lifestyle, travel, fashion, arts, and consumer brands. Again, that’s not a bad audience if you’re looking to sell sneakers, but it’s not the same thing as a Manhattan Democratic primary electorate.

Micah’s audience was smaller and relevant. His engagement looked more civic and political. The language around his audience included terms like NYC, district, ranked, real estate, advocate, and community. Alex Bores also had a more serious and locally relevant audience, with stronger ties to politics, business, technology, and New York’s professional ecosystem.

Micah’s audience has a massive “Other” slice (47%), indicating a highly diverse set of scattered interests. Aside from that, Politics (25%) is his strongest defined category, with relatively low engagement from specialized industries like tech or finance.

This is why follower count is such a weak campaign metric. A candidate with 800,000 followers and 10% local engagement may have less useful political reach than a candidate with 8,000 followers and a deeply local, high-trust audience.

Don’t ask, “Who has the biggest audience?” Ask, “Who has the right audience?”

The cult of the large political influencer

This race also points to a larger problem in Democratic digital strategy: the cult of the large political influencer.

Democrats love the idea of the big political creator. The person with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, a “national voice.” The online celebrity who can “break through.” The person who seems to offer instant scale, instant relevance, and instant access to younger voters. But most of these influencers are just like Jack.

That doesn’t mean they’re bad creators. It means their audiences are too broad, too national, too entertainment-driven, and too disconnected from the communities campaigns actually need to persuade or mobilize.

Campaigns treat large political influencers like shortcuts. Instead of building trusted local networks, they chase the biggest name who will post. Instead of asking who has credibility inside a community, they ask who has the most followers. They aren’t thinking like organizers, they are thinking like old-school TV buyers.

That’s backwards. The better model isn’t one large influencer speaking at everyone, it’s many serious local voices speaking from inside the communities campaigns need to win.

Neighborhood leaders. Local parents. Teachers. Nurses. Small business owners. Veterans. Housing advocates. Union members. Students. Faith leaders. Issue experts. Local creators who don’t see themselves as “influencers,” but who have influence where it matters. These are the voices that can make a campaign feel real.

They know the local references and can speak to voters as peers, not performers. Their credibility comes from community, not celebrity. That kind of influence is harder to see from Washington and it doesn’t look exciting on a spreadsheet. It rarely produces a big viral post everyone talks about for a day, but it’s how persuasion actually works.

Creators are not billboards with faces

None of this means campaigns should stop working with creators. Campaigns should work with more creators, not fewer. They should stop treating creators like billboards with faces.

A good creator strategy is not just influencer casting. It’s not finding the biggest account and asking them to post the message and then praying they can magically move voters in a district where the vast majority of those followers don’t live.

A good creator strategy starts with your electorate:

Who are we trying to reach?
Where do they live?
What communities do they belong to?
Who do they already trust?
What issues actually matter to them?
What language do they use when they talk about those issues?
Which messengers can speak to them in a way that feels credible, local, and human?

That’s the difference between attention and persuasion. Attention says, “Everyone is talking about this.” Persuasion says, “Someone I trust is making me think differently.” For campaigns, the second one matters much more.

The future is a creator field program

The future of political creator work is not finding one massive influencer to bless the campaign, it’s building a creator field program.

That means identifying trusted local voices and recruiting them early. Giving them real information and letting them speak in their own language. Connecting creator work to field, paid media, digital organizing, and voter contact. Measuring not just reach, but relevant reach.

Not every campaign needs a celebrity influencer. Most campaigns need a network of people who are already rooted in the communities they are trying to win.

That is especially true in House races, city races, ballot measures, local issue campaigns, and persuasion programs. These are places where geography, identity, trust, and lived experience matter enormously. A national political influencer can make a race famous, while a local trusted messenger can make a race real by talking to relevant voters.

Follows are not votes, but the right followers still matter

Influencers keep losing elections and bad influencer strategy keeps failing campaigns.

Jack didn’t lose because social media is irrelevant. He lost because his social media power was not the same as local political power. His audience was large and loud, but not local.

Micah had less attention, but more connection to the voters who mattered. That’s why he won.

Democrats should take this seriously. The party shouldn’t abandon creators. It needs to abandon the fantasy that one big online personality can substitute for organizing, trust, local credibility, and serious campaign strategy.

Attention gets you attention. Votes come from people. And the people who can move those voters are often not the biggest influencers in politics. They are the local voices campaigns have been overlooking the whole time.

People First runs the best creator campaigns in politics, schedule a call with us to learn more.