October 2026: EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Politics Shows Make Noise (And Headlines) Across the Political Spectrum

With the U.S. midterm elections just weeks away, we’ve turned ORBIT’s attention to the news and politics categories—two genres that will be getting plenty of traction this fall. Both are stronger performers than you might expect, and have the potential to yield unimpeachable results for those who invest in them strategically. Here are the big headlines from ORBIT’s survey of the top 15 news and politics shows.

ORBIT (the Oxford Road Benchmark Intelligence Tool) isolates performance using actual campaign data representing over $2 billion in advertiser spend. ORBIT doesn’t care about vanity metrics; it only highlights the inventory that actually converts for advertisers.

October 2026 ORBIT Rankings

October 2026 ORBIT Insights

If you elect to invest in the news or politics genres, you should know in advance there’s no obvious buying path: Our ORBIT ranking has a notably diversified assortment of shows, spanning different publishers and ideologies. And given that many of these shows combine news and politics, regardless of their official category, can make things all the more challenging: The top-ranked Lovett or Leave It lands in the news category, even though it often focuses on politics.

Thankfully, our ORBIT ranking makes clear which shows are finding audiences, regardless of category. And if you’re still not sure what programs to test, our survey also highlights publisher ecosystems that might be worth exploring. Here are the big takeaways from our news and politics list:

• The News is Good for News Shows: In our survey of the 15 top shows in the news and politics category, the news genre dominated the survey, with 12 programs total, including the top three entries: Morning Wire (#3), Mo News (#2), and Lovett or Leave It (#1). You may have friends or relatives who claim they’re tuning out the news, but they’re in the minority: This remains a widely popular category.

• No Single Publisher Dominates the List… Our ranker is remarkably varied, with ten different publishers responsible for the top 15 news and politics shows. And while companies like Red Seat Ventures and The Daily Wire have multiple programs, no single network owns the list. Our advice to brands:  Consider building a portfolio that buys across multiple publishers

• …But Crooked Media Has Built the Deepest Bench The publisher has four shows in the Top 15: What A Day (#15); Pod Save America (#6); Offline With Jon Favreau (#4); and Lovett or Leave It (#1). That gives buyers a great opportunity to test individual programs, as well as to experiment with package options within a single publisher.

• The Line-Up Doesn’t Lean In One Direction The shows that landed in our ranker include such conservative as The Ben Shapiro Show (#8) and AM Update With Megyn Kelly (#7), as well as established progressive shows like The Meidastouch Podcast (#12) and The Majority Report with Sam Seder (#11). The politics and news landscape is more diverse in podcasting than in other mediums, and there are opportunities for savvy buyers to reach audiences on both sides of the aisle.

Unlock past ORBIT rankings and insights

How ORBIT Works (And Why It’s A Metric That Matters)

ORBIT normalizes performance across different advertiser goals, whether that’s target CAC, desired ROAS, or cost per qualified lead. This allows direct comparison across campaign types, something download-based rankings can’t provide.

The difference: Many tracking tools tell you who’s advertising and estimate spend, count ad occurrences, or measure downloads and reach.

ORBIT shows which podcasts made money and which ones didn’t.

We factor in what advertisers paid, what they were trying to achieve, how it was measured– including survey-based attribution data–and whether the investment delivered ROI. That’s the difference between counting impressions and measuring profit.

Our methodology:

• Minimum 3 distinct advertisers per show
• Minimum 3 paid drops per advertiser
• At least 50% of placements must exceed advertiser goals
• A 12-month rolling analysis updated monthly
• Attribution-normalized across pixels, codes, URLs, and modeling

For Advertisers

Here’s how ORBIT can help you eliminate guesswork from podcast planning:

• De-risk initial buys by seeing which shows have proven track records with similar advertisers.
• Optimize faster with normalized performance data across attribution models.
• Find hidden gems before they become expensive tier-1 shows.
• Break category assumptions with data that shows where your customers actually listen.
• Scale with confidence, knowing which placements consistently deliver ROI.

The era of buying podcast ads based on download numbers is over. ORBIT shows you which shows drive performance before you spend a dollar.

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