Why can't YouTubers win elections?

I think this is JJ’s subtle way of saying “No I’m not running for office”.

Imagine being the voter saying: "Oh, I voted for this guy because he makes funny pranks on YouTube"

You forgot the largest YouTuber to have ever run for elected office, British YouTuber Tom Scott (whom has a subscriber count of around 4 million) his channel is mostly general interest and “questions you never knew you had answered” stuff. He ran for the city of London riding in the 2010 UK parliamentary election and gained around 0.2 percent of the vote. The only reason he ran was as a result of losing a bet on who would win the super bowl back in 2009. He donned the persona “Mad Cap’n Tom” during the election, and ran on eliminating taxes on rum, and schools giving classes in swordsmanship

With the point you make near the end, part of me wonders how well as local YouTuber could do in wherever they’re from (e.g. a Maryland-based YouTuber who talks about stuff in Maryland doing well in Maryland)

Because they keep forgetting to say "Smash that voting ballot!!!"

You touched on it a bit in your discussion of failed candidacies of British youtubers, but I really think that that we can't undersell how important the party label is to the failures of almost all of the youtubers you mentioned. At the end of the day, Count Dankula ran as a UKIP candidate in Scotland in 2019 despite the fact that A. UKIP has never been popular in Scotland B. UKIP has been more or less dead since 2017 C. The party's leader, Nigel Farage, started a new party (then, the Brexit Party) and took UKIP's voter base with him. In the case of your Canadian friend, he ran as a PPC candidate in a safe Liberal riding. To me it seems pretty clear that these (non-American) cases have nothing to do with the candidates being youtubers so much as them not standing for a party that was ever going to win.

Tom Scott ran as a pirate for a seat in parliament because he lost a bet, and Noel Gallagher voted for him. So that might be the most successful YouTube candidate ever

I think this phenomenon just shows how clueless a lot of the political side of YouTube is when it comes to what your average person in any country believes. This can also explain how so many candidates that are usually the most Right wing or Left wing candidate running will have such ferocious support online and then it doesn't translate into actual votes. Eccentric people have always dominated political discourse on this platform, and there are only so many of them in the real world.

I think it's still pretty impressive that a random YouTuber managed to get 9 percent of the vote in California.

Over in Belarus a YouTuber and anti-corruption activist Sergei Tikhanovsky ran for president in 2020 and gained a lot of traction. He was quickly disqualified and later jailed for good measure which means that at least the Belarusian government thought he had a real shot. It’s a similar story with Alexander Navalny in Russia. The thing that sets them apart from the examples you mentioned is that Navalny and Tikhanovsky were primarily political activists from the start who used YouTube as a tool to get around their state controlled media, not primarily YouTubers who decided to give politics a try.

The biggest issue is that online followings don’t translate to local electoral success. Even if the YouTuber has a decent online following, the average voter probably has no idea who they are.

Here in Argentina a financial youtuber, Ramiro Marra, just got got elected last month into the Buenos Aires City legislature as part of the libertarian La Libertad Avanza party, so that's something.

My fear is that the only level that a celebrity can enter politics is at the national level so that we end up with Keemstar vs Hasan for president in 2040

In Brazil, there has actually been quite a trend of political yotubers being elected, almost exclusively on the right wing. The most noteworthy of these figures is the now state legislator Arthur "mamãefalei" do Val, a youtuber who built his career by making videos of him going to left wing protests and taunting the protesters with right wing catchphrases. He was elected to his position with an incredible amount of votes, the most out of any candidate if I'm not mistaken.

I think many can argue that Niko Omilana actually succeeded instead of failing. Yes, he didn’t do very well but he succeeded in his goals. He wanted to prove that it was possible to shake the system and get into the top 5 in the elections, doing the unheard of. Which he did, and with unconventional tactics and a joke campaign which makes it a lot more impressive. I think his campaign was more of a proof of concept rather than an actual try at winning, one that worked quite well

Ukraine has shown us that a comedian can. The USA has shown us that a reality TV star can. It probably is just a matter of time before a YouTuber wins an election, since YouTube has plenty of content creators specialising in comedy or reality videos.

Being a YouTuber is like being a actor who only play minor roles he is well know but not that poplar and people don't take him seriously imo

The false impression is YT subscribers and popularity means a person is particularly well known and popular in their local area. As noted by JJ YT is worldwide so I can watch content created by someone in Asia, Australia, Europe, etc. where I do not live. For some content I do not pay that much attention to where the channel is based even if it rather obvious to viewers.

I think there’s two big reasons: 1. Generally speaking, having more extreme political views is better for getting more attention online, but can be terribly handicapping in real life politics. It can also limit who you can and can’t run for; Freiheit ran for a party on the political fringe in a section of the country where he was never going to win. 2. YouTubers may not necessarily have been involved in local politics before blowing up on YouTube. A huge part of working your way up in politics is meeting local party figures and getting involved in a political party. Even so-called “outsiders” like Trump have been hugely involved in politics before running, with his active donating and lobbying. Not having a party backing means you’re without a strong local infrastructure, making it incredibly difficult to win a district against party machines. This is why I think it would be different for you, JJ. For one thing, you have fairly mainstream centre right views largely in line with the Conservative Party, a major party, and seem to have some friends and connections within the Tories and the BC political establishment.

In America, folks often use the term “carpetbagger” to describe a candidate showing up to run in a district that they’re not from. Carpetbaggers were northerners who moved to the south, post civil war, to pick up land on the cheap.