The DNC Takes Center Stage on TikTok
The DNC Takes Center Stage on TikTok
Heavy on both policy and joy, DNC content abounds on TikTok
While tonight is the final night of the DNC Convention in Chicago, users on TikTok didn’t wait until the end of convention week to get that sweet content up and rolling. On the viral social media app, clips of the DNC’s many speakers are abundant.
Here’s Obama saying “Don’t boo. Vote” to over 3.4 million viewers. Here’s former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham declaring that she loves her country more than her party to 1.9 million viewers. And here’s Rep. Jasmine Crockett asking 1.4 million viewers on TikTok to compare Kamala Harris’s resume against Donald Trump’s rap sheet.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg even used the DNC to launch his own TikTok account, gaining over half a million followers in a matter of hours.
Two of the top ten posts, however, about the DNC were about Lil Jon’s surprise appearance (and cameo performance) during Georgia’s turn in the roll call. This one from @dailymail has 2.1 million views and 151.1K likes and this one from @msnbc has 1 million views and 137.1K likes. If you’re looking for some interesting hot takes and analyses from some non-politicos on Lil Jon’s appearance, here’s one. Here’s another. And one more.
And here’s a fun one showing the different energies between the Republican Party’s Roll Call at the RNC last month, and the Democratic Par-tay Roll Call on Tuesday.
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According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were at least 1,500 posts on TikTok about the DNC that received over 180 million views. Our suspicion is that those numbers are a major undercount. Besides, we expect to see a lot more content about the DNC continue to roll into next week. If you somehow missed it on TV or in person, TikTok certainly had you covered.
@TimWalz quickly overcomes @JD
As we’ve written before, JD Vance joined TikTok on August 1st. He made the shockingly poor decision to have his first video be literally overflowing with couches. 👀 To date, there are just four videos posted to the account.
Over on the Left, Tim Walz joined TikTok this past Friday, sharing a video with his dog Scout at the dog park announcing his entry to “TimTok.” To date, there are seven videos posted to the account.
Looking at the numbers, @JD now has 409,900 followers and 572,200 likes, while @TimWalz has already blown past his “weird” rival, racking up 1.1 million followers and 2.1 million likes.
Top posts: Kamala Harris
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 32,900 posts mentioning Harris on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 434.2 million views.
24% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Harris were negative and 74% were positive. These were some of the most viewed:
The most-viewed post on TikTok mentioning Harris this week was from @couriernewsroom, showing a man on the street style video asking folks at Home Depot and Lowes “Trump or Kamala?” It has received over 27 million views. It’s notable because it's basically a mashup of the good parts of a bunch of anti-Harris videos from user @langstone680.
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On the other side of the aisle, @donaldtrumpjr also received a bunch of views on at least one Kamala-related video. Don Jr recreated a joke Team Harris used a while back, showing Harris saying something negative, and then tacking on a Trump disclaimer, declaring he “approved this message.”
But other than that hit, all the other top posts about Harris this week were neutral or positive.
Top posts: Donald Trump
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 41,600 posts mentioning Trump on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 703.9 million views.
63% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Trump were negative and 36% were positive. These were some of the most-viewed:
This clip from @dailymail made both lists (5.2 million views and 408.8K likes). We’re counting this as neutral for both because it’s hard to determine the intention of the poster. But in our humble opinion, this is a hit against Trump and a big plus for Harris. It’s just a clip of Trump complaining that “Everyone gets health care if Harris is elected.” Good or bad? You decide!
This other @dailymail clip of Trump making fun of Harris’ laugh also threw us for a loop. He comes across quite poorly, but as they say, sentiment analysis is in the eye of the beholder.
Those were the only clips in the top ten this week about Donald Trump that weren’t clearly, and brutally, negative.
On the issues…
Out of 15 major political issues that we’re tracking each week with the help of Zelf’s tracking tools, the political topic receiving the most engagement last week was Fitness to Serve.
Note: For purposes of this newsletter, “Top-Performing Posts” can be defined as any posts that TikTok displays in its search functionality. Many posts that receive very few views are not distributed widely and are excluded from search.
This week, four of the top five posts were pro-Kamala posts, and only one was a hit against Trump’s fitness to serve.
Those included the new Kamala ad at the DNC (with 4.3 million views and 921K likes), Joe Biden getting tons of love during the event (with 4.6 million views and 478.6K likes), and, as we mentioned above, President Obama bringing out an old classic, telling folks Don’t boo, vote (with 3.3 million views and 290.8K likes).
Another was @thedailyshow skewering Trump for oddly using Tic Tacs to explain inflation (with 3.8 million views and 416.1K likes).
From the campaign trail…
Here’s how many total views each campaign’s videos have received since the start of the campaign:
This week, Harris’s combined accounts gained 61 million new views and posted 29 videos.
The top-performing @KamalaHQ post of the week was a new ad shown at the DNC. This photo slideshow of JD Vance posing for a photo with a Wall Street Journal headline talking about inflation being down also did some huge numbers.
And the top post from @kamalaharris was of VP Harris showing NC Governor Roy Cooper which pickles she had picked up for Doug.
Over on Team Trump, they gained 60.3 million new views and posted four new videos. All four videos ran up solid numbers, ranging from 1.6 million views all the way to 19.8 million views. One was an edited bit making the election “Too Big To Rig.” All the rest were just him speaking directly to the camera.
The video with 1.6 million views was posted quite recently and we expect those numbers to go up. Excluding that one, of the 12 videos he’s posted in total, his posts have an average view count north of 53 million. It’s kind of surprising how rarely they post to the account given their massive reach.
Though if the last two weeks are an indication, we expect to see more from Team Trump on TikTok in the weeks to come.
Creator Spotlight: @yourbluechannelofficial
Their handle is @yourbluechannelofficial, but their name on TikTok is Latinos for Harris 🤝🥥🌴.
Run by Wilmer Castro, this account is focused on promoting a message of: “Dem, Anti-Trump, Pro-Choice, Feminist, LGBTQ ally, Woke, Gun Control+”
They do so with passion and joy.
Latinos For Harris uses trending sounds, funny bits, costume changes and more to attack Donald Trump, lift up Kamala Harris and generally push progressive values on the platform.
Here’s a comedic post of them hitting “actors who support Trump” with a shoe, a la whack-a-mole. Here is Castro “calling every Republican he knows so he can laugh at how Biden got Mexico to pay for the wall and Trump couldn’t.” Here he is celebrating that Fox admitted that they were lying about the election being stolen after the Dominion settlement came to light.
There are lots of folks reporting on these types of stories, but few do it with the kind of glee that he brings to the table. And it’s working for him. Despite getting his initial account banned in early 2023, Castro has already rebuilt a following of almost 100,000 followers and racked up over 2.6 million likes.
News & platform updates
For years, other social media platforms were producing copycat features and following TikTok’s lead. But recently, we’ve seen TikTok expanding into some of Instagram’s territory. First, it was photo carousels (which, as we flagged last week, can be really solid performers!). Now, they’re coming for the group chat.
Feel free to hold your phone upright! The DNC has been streaming vertically this year.
Feel like the internet is lacking in centers of gravity these days? It’s not just you.
Don’t be creepy, in real life… or on the internet!
That’s it for this week. We’ll be back in your inboxes next Thursday with more charts, data, and insights. If you enjoyed today’s newsletter, would you mind forwarding it to a colleague or sharing it on Twitter or Threads?
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The #FYP newsletter is a product of FWIW and produced by Josh Klemons, Kyle Tharp, and Lucy Ritzmann. Most data included in this newsletter is provided by Zelf, an AI-powered social analytics platform.