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After President Joe Biden stepped down and Harris announced her candidacy, excitement quickly swelled around the new campaign. The KamalaHQ account on TikTok quintupled in followers within the first week, the campaign tells WIRED, and the new Harris-focused content received 232 million views and more than 33 million likes. This far surpassed Trump’s total like count: As of publication, Trump’s account has nearly 30 million total likes, compared to Harris’ 60 million.
Beyond the engagement data, the campaign also noticed TikTok users and content creators creating pro-Harris content at a rate once inconceivable with Biden at the top of the ticket.
“We're able to tap into the For You page in a different way now because the amount of people creating content about KamalaHQ has grown so much,” Lauren Kapp, who runs the Harris campaign’s TikTok account, tells WIRED. “We've seen that in our engagement with influencers and celebrities as well too. There's a huge rise of them in our comments and resharing our content on KamalaHQ in a way that wasn't really happening on BidenHQ.”
This has created a feedback loop where supporters are creating content that the campaign remixes on its own. "Our audience is always encouraging us to use different sounds and trends, and we're being responsive—tapping into these viral moments and engaging directly with our audience in a way that they are excited about," says Kapp. "Our comment section is flooded with people saying, ‘oh my gosh I’ve been waiting for them to do this!’ It creates a community with our followers, which allows our content to be shared widely and organically.”
It’s not just Harris who has benefited from a digital groundswell of support for her campaign. Political influencers and content creators are raking in followers, likes, and engagement. Several creators who spoke with WIRED said their posts on platforms like TikTok and Instagram were receiving more likes and positive comments than when Biden led the ticket.
“The response to anything with Kamala's name being in the post is incredibly high, like I have never, never seen that for Biden,” Saadia Mirza, a political creator with around 100,000 followers on TikTok, tells WIRED. Mirza characterizes herself as a “Never-Trumper” who aggregates news and states from across the web. “I don't know what their numbers are, but I can tell you, just from my posts alone, I've noticed the engagement, the sharing, the comments, people replying to them, sending you private DMs is extremely high.”
“I've definitely seen a shift of excitement, people getting more involved in politics, people engaging in the conversation, more sharing things that they wouldn't before,” says singer, actor, and political influencer Malynda Hale. Hale posts news commentary to her 50,000 Instagram followers. “And a lot of people that I've talked to, who are like, ‘Oh, I don't really do politics.’ They're definitely doing politics now, because this is such a crucial election.”
For Kelton Allen, a TikTok creator from Florida, the excitement he’s witnessed online has crept into his daily life as well.
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“I was having conversations with friends like, ‘Oh, what do you think about Vice President Harris being the nominee?’ Then that picked up steam and I think, like, right now, what I'm seeing is, like, everyone's excited about Vice President Harris,” Allen tells WIRED. “There are concerns about President Biden and his ability to win this election, but I feel like some of those concerns kind of have been put to rest with Vice President Harris. I feel like people are excited and they want to see this happen.”
As Harris’ online stock and engagement has risen, Trump’s appears to be slowing down. When Trump first joined TikTok in June, the account quickly surpassed the BidenHQ account in followers, reaching more than 1.1 million within the first 24 hours of the launch. “We will leave no front undefended, and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told the AP in June. Trump’s first video with Universal Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO Dana White accrued nearly 170 million views, but those view counts for Trump’s page have steadily declined since the initial post.
Kapp suggested that Trump’s decrease in engagement could be because of how the campaign is using the app. Kapp pointed to the campaign’s reliance on popular creators like boxer and former vlogger Jake Paul and Kick streamer Adin Ross, instead of participating in platform trends and using popular audio clips. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Their launch was a flop, to say the least,” Kapp says. “The Trump team does not understand this platform.”
