While political polls show Donald Trump and Kamala Harris neck and neck within the race to turn into the following US president, each campaigns are working feverishly to influence any undecided voters and get all of their supporters to vote.
And that features courting young voters, who’re notoriously difficult to win over. Whether their efforts repay in an election with razor-thin margins stays to be seen and might not be known on Election Day.
The Harris camp specifically has invested money and time to bolster the vice chairman's presence on popular social media platforms akin to Instagram and TikTok. A recent survey from the Institute of Politics on the Harvard Kennedy School shows Harris has a 31-point lead over Trump amongst 18- to 29-year-olds.
Since the previous Democratic senator from California entered the race this summer after President Joe Biden left office, her campaign has far outpaced the previous Republican president's spending on social media promoting.
Harris spent greater than $13.6 million on ads on Meta, Facebook and Instagram's parent company in a two-week period from Sept. 23 to Oct. 5, in accordance with nonpartisan political promoting analyst Wesleyan Media Project. Trump spent only a fraction of that through the same period – just over $2.1 million.
While it's unclear how much Harris has spent on promoting on TikTok, her campaign account @KamalaHQ has amassed 5 million followers and posted greater than 500 times since early July. Harris' personal account @kamalaharris has 6.5 million followers, in comparison with Trump's personal account @realdonaldtrump, which has greater than 12.5 million followers but has only posted about 40 times. Trump's campaign account @teamtrump has about 4 million followers on TikTok.
Chima Nwokolo, a senior political science student at San Jose State University, said that each the Harris and Trump campaigns have used Gen Z culture to motivate and have interaction young voters – Harris through memes and humor and Trump through the support of rappers and football players. including Kanye West and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker.
“It really went from an election that pitted two typical old men against each other to a potentially historic opportunity for the United States to elect its first female leader,” Nwokolo said.
UC Berkeley junior Utkarsh Jain, a spokesman for the university's Republican student organization, said that while he believes the Democratic Party as a complete has done a greater job of seizing on trends and marketing himself on social media, Trump be the exception.
“Trump is a celebrity. He's been a celebrity all his life, so he knows how to play. He knows this world,” Jain said. He's “bringing in a lot of new people that we've never seen in the Republican Party.”
The Harris and Trump campaigns didn’t reply to requests for comment from this news organization.
The biggest change this yr in comparison with previous elections has been Harris' give attention to targeting multiple media platforms, including social media and popular podcasts, said Jan Leighley, a government professor and political scientist at American University in Washington, D.C. Harris accepted Alex Cooper's show, “Call Her Daddy,” recently in an attempt to succeed in Cooper's 5 million weekly listeners – most of whom are women under 35. Trump has also sought out podcasts, recently appearing on the country's most listened-to podcast, the “Joe Rogan Experience,” to appeal to the show's young male audience.
Harris' late begin to the race could have forced her campaign to prioritize social media to beat the drawback of a shortened campaign season, Leighley said.
“The branding, the amount of money spent through social media and the way it is used, I think its presence in non-traditional media channels is particularly appealing to the group of people it needs to attract are – I think that's a bigger focus than anything else.” “We've ever seen a candidate,” Leighley said.
For some Bay Area college students, Harris' approach has paid off, generating a level of engagement and enthusiasm among young voters.
Vivian Shepherd-Mayen, a 20-year-old student at Stanford University, was initially unenthusiastic when Harris became the Democratic nominee. She does not agree with her immigration policy and the Israel-Hamas war.
Then she came across the TikTok account @KamalaHQ. Now she is “possessed.”
She said that while it could “still hurt a bit of” to see Harris' name on her ballot, the report made her feel more connected to the vice president and made her campaign more “human.”
“I can’t imagine her campaign without the social media aspect,” Shepherd-Mayen said. “It's a bit like dry humor, which I think is much more Gen Z – the dry humor, the memes. It's really exciting to see. I’ve never seen that in a campaign because the people who participate are usually very old and don’t understand the memes.”
Stanford senior Isha Kalia said Harris' presence on TikTok made the election more accessible to younger voters who don't typically watch cable or news.
“With her campaign, she is actively trying to reach our age group and meet us where we are, rather than expecting us to meet them where they are,” Kalia said. “You just learn a lot more about their policies and their interests.”
But the strategy hasn't worked for all young voters.
Samantha Sternstein, a student at San Jose State University, said the Harris campaign's use of Instagram and TikTok to reach young voters can feel “inherently manipulative” because it taps into Gen Z culture to serve voters even though she votes for them.
“I am sure it is effective for people who are undecided and not sure whether they will vote. These are the people we actually need to elect,” Sternstein said. “But as someone who has made up their mind and knows that they’re voting (and who they’re voting for), I feel prefer it's not as effective for me.”
Despite efforts by both campaigns to get young voters to the polls, some Bay Area students still weren't sure who they would vote for in the final days of the campaign — and whether they planned to vote at all.
Sage Barden, a freshman at UC Berkeley, was one of those undecided voters.
“I’ve seen some of his (posts) on TikTok,” Barden said, referring to Trump, “but Kamala is definitely hiring young people who know how to appeal to Gen Z voters.”
Ultimately, government professor Leighley said it takes greater than a funny TikTok video to get young voters to the polls, and it's just as vital to make sure potential voters have the support and resources they need to really forged their ballot .
“Could it make young voters more likely to vote? I think that might be it,” she said. “It is a possible step in the right direction. But I think in the end it's not just about where we get information from or the type of information. Voting is a social and truly political act that we must be connected to.”
Originally published:
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