From "please don't leave" to "ask Grok": John Oliver's midterm tour

The election-week main story drew about 3.8 million views in under a day, and its comment section filled more than twice as fast as usual.

Channel: LastWeekTonight Story of November 3, 2026Trari Newsroom

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Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 4,016,646 views a day, 12 times a normal first day on this channel (326,922).

Midterms 2026: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

What does a campaign look like in its final days, through John Oliver's clip reel? It begins with Ken Paxton at a rally asking the crowd, "Do me a favor. Please don't leave." Then comes an NBC reporter at the Iowa State Fair delivering his segment from a spinning carousel.

"Midterms 2026" is Last Week Tonight's main story for the week of the vote. In about 21 hours it reached roughly 3.8 million views, more than ten times the channel's usual first day for a long video. The comments arrived more than twice as fast as normal, many of them about the cost of all that campaign advertising. The episode follows two weeks in which the show trained its attention on the Republican Party and the far right. This time the subject is the election itself.

Oliver opens with a warning about polls, recalling the Iowa poll that misjudged the 2024 race. He then turns to candidates keeping their distance from Donald Trump. Mike Rogers apologizes mid-interview for "some difficulty in my earpiece," a moment Oliver treats as rather convenient. Upstate New York candidate Anthony Constantino, who also makes political rap, answers a question about his district with "I don't know, ask Grok."

The longer middle section covers election lawsuits, Alaska's Senate ballot with two candidates named Dan Sullivan, Elon Musk's spending, and an attack ad from Vivek Ramaswamy's side against Ohio's Amy Acton that drew criticism from both parties. Oliver also takes on the Islamophobic attacks aimed at Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed.

Ads about transgender people and "Too Low-T for Texas" jabs at James Talarico lead to Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan's verdict: "It's just not resonating." A Michigan salon owner sums up what she wants from politicians in four words: "Lower my cost of living." Oliver closes by urging viewers to vote against Trump's agenda, then eats cotton candy.

The channel was busy around it. The full episode, which adds a look at the $100 bill, went up the same day, and a Short about candidates Mike Collins and Marshall Rawson passed a million views.

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More from LastWeekTonightOn today's chart 777K views since yesterdayJohn Oliver examines Trump's proposed banknote and America's love of hundredsThe full Last Week Tonight episode adds a currency investigation to its midterm coverage, including an official who put his own portrait on money.Channel: LastWeekTonight · Story of November 3, 2026 Also in Talk shows and late nightVideo taking off 12x its usual first dayWhoopi Goldberg revisits Patrick Stewart's invitation to join PicardThe View host pays tribute to her longtime friend, telling viewers that he died over the weekend.Channel: The View · Story of November 3, 2026 A different discovery todayVideo taking off 13x its usual first dayCaptain Steeeve weighs ice and a thunderstorm in the Palm Beach Learjet crashThe retired airline captain replays the crew's radio calls line by line and explains what severe icing can do to a wing, while noting that no official cause ha…Channel: Captain Steeeve · Story of November 3, 2026

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From "please don't leave" to "ask Grok": John Oliver's midterm tour The full story on Trari: https://trari.com/en/story/lastweektonight-24736/?from=kit

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The numbers

A Sunday main story usually draws a few hundred thousand views on its first day. This one reached several million.

the video's first day

usual first day here

326,922

this video

4,016,646

subscribers

10,200,000

no significant change in the last 7 days

total views

4,959,767,574

views per day

5,814,891

typical day: 1,939,142

the video

views

3,758,666

likes

84,804

comments

4,974

days online

1

subscribers: this channel and similar channels

Saturday Night Live

17,400,000

The Daily Show

14,100,000

The Late Show with Stephe…

10,700,000

LastWeekTonight

10,200,000

The Graham Norton Show

5,770,000

Good Morning America

5,510,000

As of November 3, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.