CNN's John King Asked to Travel the Nation for His First Podcast: 'I Ached to Get Back on the Road' (Exclusive) (2024)

CNN's John King has been traveling around the United States to get a better understanding of where swing voters' heads are at as an unprecedented election season begins to heat up. His findings are now being rolled out in a three-part podcast special called All Over the Map, following his TV segment of the same name.

The first part of King's election-themed audio project — available wherever you find new episodes of The Assignment with Audie Cornish — premiered on Monday, June 24, focusing on how loyal Nikki Haley supporters in Pennsylvania plan to vote in the general election.

The second and third episodes, which will be released on the two Mondays that follow, plan to take listeners into the minds of divided Georgia residents and voters of color in the Rust Belt.

PEOPLE spoke to King as he prepared to launch his first-ever podcast, discussing his motivation to leave the studio and meet voters where they are. He also teases some of what he's learned in the process. Below, our conversation.

Where did the idea for All Over the Map come from?

I loved anchoring Inside Politics for seven years, but really ached to get back on the road to hear from the people Washington too often ignores and almost always misunderstands. This is my 10thpresidential campaign, which gave it a littleback to the futurenostalgia, too. So I wrote a proposal to my boss making the case for a voter-focused battleground state project. And she said, yes!

How are you finding undecided voters tospeak to?

I’m lucky to have a great team. We talk states and key demographic groups and counties, and then we hunt. Some of our voters are respondents from past CNN polling, others we find by cold calling or scrubbing social media. A few are from recommendations from people I know. It’s a mix.

The November election is expected to see the same 2020 candidates go head to head again. What's different about voters' mindsets this time around?

The thing you hear the most — from die-hard liberals to loyal Republicans, even a fair amount of Trump voters, is exasperation at the choices. They wish they had other options, and that does lead to an openness to considering third-party options, something that reminds me some of 1992 and the Perot phenomenon.

Another constant is how wary people are to talk politics outside of their closest circles. What used to be feisty but friendly debates now spiral into arguments and damaged relationships. That dynamic only makes polarization, mistrust and lack of respect for differences worse.

What was the most surprising thing you learned on the road that you may not have been able to fully grasp from a studio?

You can see the sense of drift — lack of confidence in Washington and the direction of the country — in the polling data. But when you hear it in state after state, across the economic and political spectrum, it is eye opening.

You can argue this is a fairly static race. The national and battleground state polls have been about the same for months. But the ingredients of volatility are just below the surface. Anxiety, anger, disillusionment. Voters articulate this in very different ways because it is born of their unique experiences.

One common thread is the legacy of Covid — it exhausted and challenged people, and you hear threads of the pandemic experience when voters describe their mood or their priorities. The desire for “normal” comes up a ton — again, from voters of all stripes.

Will the podcast series follow a similar format to what people have seen in your TV segments?

Yes and no. Yes, in that I hope the podcast takes people all over the map — to learn about people and places different from who they are and where they live. To listen and learn and hopefully come to respect and better understand why someone might see things so differently.

But also no — in a great way, because I see the podcast platform as a way to get more personal and detailed than we can even in a long TV or text piece. You learn when you listen. In this format, we can listen to a voter for 10 or 15 minutes — hear the passion, anger, anxiety, all of the above — as they share not only who they are likely to vote for buywhy— andhowthey got there. I hope listeners will stick with us and, over the course of a few episodes, get to meet a mix of amazing everyday Americans who live in the places that settle our closest elections.