Vice Presidential Kamala Harris’ campaign has paid millions for social media influencers to boost her candidacy among young voters, but many who use one of the most popular platforms with that cohort, TikTok, are less likely to even show up at the polls, survey data shows.
Cygnal pollster Brent Buchanan told The Post Wednesday that his firm’s surveys show Harris’ support is flat from Joe Biden’s in 2020 among voters younger than 30 years old, many of whom are not inclined to get out and vote on Nov. 5.
“They’re lower income, lower education, younger — these are all factors that go into less voter participation,” Buchanan said, pointing to an Oct. 24-26 poll by his firm that shows they are also 68% female, another dominant Harris demographic.
“They’re the hardest people to get to turn out,” he added.
The Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee have shelled out $4.5 million to talent agencies since March 2023 that developed social media influencer campaigns, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Influencers were not paid directly by Harris’ team or the DNC but, rather, through a network of other liberal PACs.
Still, four of the top 10 trending posts since Oct. 1 have been Trump campaign content — with two of those showing clips from his Oct. 20 drive-thru operator shift at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s franchise.
“I could do this all day,” the 78-year-old ex-president beamed in the most-watched of the four trending posts, which garnered 65.6 million views. “I like this job.”
The only trending clip that touched on the VP’s campaign was TikTok reel of former President Barack Obama rapping Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” at a Detroit rally for Harris, which ranked as the sixth-most-watched clip.
“Elections are about turnout, not persuasion,” Buchanan also said. “All the money they put into paying influencers as part of the campaign has come to what? Unless those people are now getting their followers to turn out it’s really irrelevant.”
Harris and the White House have also courted influencers to promote their administration’s agenda on social media.
That funding hasn’t necessarily boosted views, though, according to data from the social media intelligence firm CredoIQ.
Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 30, the top 10 topics covered on TikTok posts in terms of viewership have been Donald Trump (5.4 billion), Kamala Harris (3.1 billion), general news (1.8 billion), the conflict in the Middle East (1.3 billion), US politics (973.4 million), Republicans (769.6 million), US elections (765.6 million), Democrats (611.5 million), JD Vance (571.3 million) and Tim Walz (455.4 million).
Some of the top issues for 2024 voters — the economy and immigration — didn’t crack the top 10 list of topics for TikTokers over that period, nor did President Biden.
In 2020, Biden garnered 49% support from news-consuming TikTokers who were likely to vote, according to Buchanan, the same percentage that his vice president now enjoys.
Harris still has a majority of support from likely voters ages 18 to 29, but it’s beneath the levels that carried Biden to victory four years prior.
Among that age group, 59% cast ballots for Biden and 35% for Trump, Pew Research figures show.
In a head-to-head matchup, Trump is now winning 43% of those young voters, compared with Harris’ 55%, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll in October.
“Trump went from 34% in 2020 to 40% now,” Buchanan said, citing Cygnal data. “So he’s grown his support among those who get their news from TikTok.”
Pew Research surveys indicate 62% of Americans in that age bracket use TikTok — but only 39% say they are doing so to get their news for the day.
Right-leaning messaging on TikTok is now being viewed more often than left-leaning content, 47% to 43%, since the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, according to data from CredoIQ reported by the Financial Times last week.
Trump’s TikTok campaign account has more than twice as many followers as the Harris team’s — 12 million to 5 million.
The Harris account, KamalaHQ, has attracted a slightly higher 1.5 billion views in total this cycle, while Trump’s account garnered 1 billion.
“Early indications of voter registration have been really positive in terms of activating young people,” Linktree head of creators Laura Cohen also told the Financial Times.
“The proof is going to be in the pudding,” added Cohen, whose firm is working on initiatives to boost voter turnout.
