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Sydney Morning Herald

Why Albanese is leading Dutton in ‘podcaster election' stakes

After Donald Trump's embrace of various bro podcasters helped lock in the male edgelord vote and pave his return to the White House, it was no surprise that Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton would race to the mics ahead of Saturday's poll. But as the election campaign reaches the home stretch, the prime minister isn't just leading the polls – he's also edged ahead in the podcast/YouTuber stakes. After ruffling a few press gallery feathers by rolling out the federal budget red carpet to a few Labor-friendly influencers, Albanese has taken plenty of time out of his campaign schedule for interviewers well outside the Canberra bubble. Last month, the PM sank non-alcoholic beers with Perth-based YouTuber Ozzy Man Reviews during a near hour-long interview. He popped up on a new show from the brains behind popular podcast The Grade Cricketer. And last week, he did an interview with a podcast called Bloody Brilliant Beers, a couple of blokes from Brissie who post about footy and frothies. Sounds like a perfect platform to reach the kind of normie suburban young male voters Dutton would desperately love to pick off. Loading But the opposition leader has had less time for such engagements. Before the campaign, he did an interview with Olympic diver Sam Fricker. Like Albanese, he's sat down with Mark Bouris, the businessman and wannabe Joe Rogan, who's interviewed politicians across the aisle. Both leaders have sat down with Kate Langbroek on the No Filter podcast from women's media empire Mama Mia. But it was Albanese who got the weirdest internet celebrity endorsement of the campaign on Wednesday from none other than Joseph Allen Maldonado, aka Joe Exotic, star of the pandemic-era Netflix documentary Tiger King. Maldonado, who is serving a 22-year prison sentence for animal abuse and the attempted murder-for-hire of rival zookeeper Carole Baskin, told his Instagram followers to support the PM. Rather than the work of some enterprising Labor apparatchik, the endorsement came courtesy of 2DayFM hosts Jimmy and Nath, who asked Exotic to back the PM during a radio interview this week. It's a bit of social media love that Dutton probably didn't envy.