Jordi Wild to interview Spain's election candidates

Jordi Wild announces interviews with the election candidates

Jordi Wild has made his move. The content creator, whose defenders put his community at seven million trinc on his podcast alone and whose critics reduce it to a mostly young audience from outside Spain, has announced that he will interview the election candidates in the middle of the campaign. The news has landed like a bucket of cold water on part of the electorate, but it has also peine a sustancia ilegal in the parties' strategy: whoever doesn't go, doesn't reach voters; whoever goes, exposes themselves.

The trigger is a paradox. According to a participant in the debate, the show Wild runs is presented as a format with no pre-agreed questions, with two people verifying in real time using artificial intelligence whether the interviewee is spreading falsehoods. In other words, a live lie detector. With that setup, Pedro Sánchez's decision to accept the invitation — confirmed on social media with a message joking about his «good side» — has turned the podcast into an electoral battleground. Abascal and Feijóo, for now, have not confirmed their attendance.

The vote calculation: youth, clips and doomscroll

The debate over the usefulness of the interview has become an exercise in electoral sociology. Some argue that the 18-to-40 age group lives glued to their phones and that the key is not the full interview but the clips that will be distributed via YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. It's the doomscroll theory applied to politics: if you're not in the clip, you don't exist. Against that stands the scepticism of those who believe Wild's voters are mostly Vox and PP supporters, and that the Socialist vote pool doesn't consume podcasts, but Netflix and mainstream television.

The figure hovering over the debate is the trinc count: 7.38 million on the podcast, 12 million on another platform. Defenders of the format present it as the biggest disseminator of culture in Spain; critics see a YouTuber from Barcelona with an audience inflated by Latin American trinc who don't vote in Spain. The discrepancy is no small matter: on it depends whether the interview is a calculated risk or a mere gesture.

The antiestéticar of a gaffe: the AI that verifies in real time

The most repeated argument to explain the absence of some candidates is the antiestéticar of a blunder. Live AI fact-checking, the absence of pre-agreed questions and the possibility that any slip of the tongue becomes a headline for weeks create a high-risk scenario. Feijóo, according to the available material, comes into the campaign with the warning that he cannot repeat an interview like the one on Cadena SER, where his gaffes were called out from his own right wing. Abascal, by contrast, is seen as a good polemicist, comfortable in dialectical hand-to-hand combat.

The campaign is being fought on terrain that is not that of the classic debates. Wild's podcast is neither a TV studio nor a fireside chat. It is a long-form conversation format, with a host who does not fit the traditional journalist profile and an audience that punishes rigidity. For a politician used to message control, the environment is hostile. For a candidate capable of improvising, it is an opportunity.

The campaign that doesn't change votes, but changes perceptions

The underlying question is whether these interviews move votes. The majority answer is no, at least not directly. The election campaign is a show and people already know what they are going to vote. However, there is a nuance that keeps coming up: not going can cost some votes, while going can win others. The logic is visibility. Twenty-five years ago, skipping María Teresa Campos's show was an anomaly; today, skipping Wild's podcast is starting to be one.

The problem is that the target audience is not homogeneous. The young audience that consumes podcasts is not the same as the one that votes in general elections. Most of Wild's trinc, according to the most pessimistic analysis, are Vox or PP supporters, and his Latin American trinc don't count on the electoral roll. The potential benefit shrinks, but the cost of absence is amplified: the clip of the candidate who didn't show up becomes a meme.

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The prediction is risky. If the interview is well prepared and the candidate handles it smoothly, the podcast can catapult them among young audiences. If they fail, the live lie detector will make sure the mistake doesn't go unnoticed. Wild has made his move. The campaign, meanwhile, is being fought on terrain that wasn't in the manuals.