Tim Walz and AOC to play football video game on Twitch in appeal to young men

Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez planned to stream themselves playing an American football video game against each other on Sunday as the two Democrats continued their party’s efforts to secure votes from young men just nine days before the White House election.

Walz and Ocasio-Cortez were scheduled to face each other on Twitch platform at 3pm ET in the latest edition of the Madden game after a recent NBC News survey found the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris had a lead of two percentage points over Donald Trump with young male registered voters.

Despite the edge, Democrats have polled better among the demographic in previous election cycles, creating concern among the party. And on Friday, Trump’s campaign seemingly tried to add to concern, having the former president spend three hours on Joe Rogan’s podcast, whose audience is predominantly young men and whose show often leads the global charts on both Apple and Spotify.

Harris at one point was rumored to appear with Rogan, but the sit-down never materialized. And instead it was Trump who took the spot to make his case for replacing income tax with tariffs and to reminisce about the “genius” of Robert E Lee, the Confederate military general who owned enslaved people and commanded the white supremacist, losing side of the US civil war.

Sunday’s event with Ocasio-Cortez comes after her first appearance on the Twitch platform in 2020 was one of the platform’s most watched events at that time. Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden weeks later.

Sunday’s session also comes after the Harris campaign earlier in October live-streamed a Walz rally on Twitch alongside live play of the World of Warcraft game.

Another Harris campaign strategy targeting the support of young men has centered on a series of ads on the sports gambling platform DraftKings, Yahoo Sports, and on websites such as IGN (short for Imagine Games Network) and Fandom.