Mentioned in this article
- U.S. President Donald Trump created a verified account on Twitch Thursday.
- He debuted his channel with a nearly two-hour-long broadcast of a campaign rally in Minnesota.
- His stream averaged 11.52K viewer with a total of 20K hours watched, peaking at 15.54K concurrent viewers.
United States President Donald Trump launched his own verified account on Twitch Thursday as he prepares to campaign for another term, joining a growing trend of politicians using the streaming platform to reach a younger audience.
While Twitch is typically known for being filled with primarily video game-related content, Trump’s channel debuted in the evening with a broadcast of his speech at a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Though Trump’s official Twitch channel, titled “Donaldtrump,” was only created on the day of his first stream with no significant social media push to promote his account on Twitter or Facebook, the channel’s first stream generated an average of 11.5K concurrent viewers (CCV). Additionally, the 1.7-hour stream reached 20K hours watched and peaked at 15.5K CCV.
Meanwhile, with the channel’s chat only allowing for comments from followers, Trump managed to gain nearly 42K followers at the time of writing, according to data gathered from Social Blade. Videos from Trump’s stream last night have also accrued more than 184K views.
Trump isn’t the first politician to use Twitch as a way to try to expand his reach to voters who might not otherwise seek out his campaign. In June, Democratic Presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders launched a verified Twitch page of his own, and he has since broadcast numerous rallies and town halls from the campaign trail.
Democratic Presidential candidate and businessman Andrew Yang was the first of the presidential candidates to create a Twitch page, doing so in July of 2018. However, “AndrewYang2020” is not a verified account and has only had two broadcasts totaling less than two hours of airtime since being launched. The channel hasn’t had a broadcast since May 14.
