As the 2024 presidential election draws closer, former President Donald Trump is in full focus. Indeed, Trump may be clinching primaries by slim margins, but he is still advancing steadily toward the Republican nomination. As of now, the next race to the White House appears to be a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.
This election-fueled momentum has sent shares of Digital World Acquisition (NASDAQ:DWAC) — the blank-check partner of the Trump Media & Technology Group — surging. However, other companies linked to conservative politics aren’t doing so well. That includes Rumble (NASDAQ:RUM), the video-sharing platform created to be a right-wing version of Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube. RUM stock used to move in solidarity with DWAC stock, but these days, it can’t seem garner any serious momentum.
What’s Wrong With RUM Stock?
Despite being in the green by 1% today, RUM stock has spent most of the past month trending downward amid high volatility. While shares did rise in mid-January following Trump’s Iowa Caucus victory, they have since lost momentum and appear to be slumping.
Given how much DWAC stock has benefited from the national focus on Trump, it may seem odd that RUM stock isn’t seeing the same growth. It isn’t for the company’s lack of trying. January also saw Rumble announce a partnership with Barstool Sports in a clear attempt to expand its reach. At the time, I speculated that this decision wouldn’t do much to impact RUM, as audiences for the two platforms likely overlapped. Over a month later, RUM stock is down and still struggling to ride the Trump wave.
All this suggests that Rumble’s space may simply be too competitive. The conservative users who might turn to it for content are just as likely to spend time on Truth Social or X, which is a better-established platform. Rumble burst onto the scene promising to promote “free speech” in an appeal to conservatives and far-right users, but it seems that even prominent talking heads aren’t doing well on the platform.
Rolling Stone took a hard look at the platform’s data:
“Follower count doesn’t automatically correlate to views, and a channel that seems moribund can score a breakout hit here and there, yet it’s hard not to notice a pattern. Dinesh D’Souza, the conspiracy theorist pardoned by President Trump for his felony conviction in an illegal campaign contribution scheme, has even more followers — 1.71 million — yet the average view count for his videos is in the low hundreds. Many of Sean Hannity’s don’t reach a thousand.”
A high follower count doesn’t mean much if the followers aren’t actually watching your content. When we account for these problems, it’s no wonder why RUM stock is doing so poorly.
The Bottom Line
Well into the primary season, Rumble just can’t seem to compete with its rivals, much less video-sharing leader YouTube. Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski has also claimed that the platform actually has plenty of left-leaning users, but with a reputation as a “hub for misinformation and conspiracy theories,” that doesn’t seem very likely.
In my view, RUM stock isn’t riding the election wave because the company is becoming irrelevant, even among its own user base. Investors looking to play the political momentum may be best off focusing on companies that will rise if Biden wins, as some experts predict. Not stocks that only rise when Trump has a good day.
On the date of publication, Samuel O’Brient did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
