Tim Walz takes center stage
Liberal TikTokers get the Big Midwestern Dad Energy they were asking for
Last week, TikTok was overflowing with hate towards – and some pretty funny jokes about – about Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance. (PS, JD is on TikTok now @JD and it's not going well.)
This week, the hate turned into joy as Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. Initial content about Walz has been and continues to be overwhelmingly positive on TikTok, mostly focused on introducing his record and biography to a wide audience.
One of the most viral pieces of content about Walz came from the @dailymail, which highlighted a video of the Midwestern Dad signing into law a free school lunch policy for MN children. It’s received around 3 million views so far.
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Liberal news account @couriernewsroom also had some huge Walz posts this week. Their compilation of “4 times Tim Walz went on TV and just made sense” has 2 million views, while this GOTV video of him teaching America how to change a headlight harness on a 2014 Ford Edge similarly received over 1.3 million views. Another video (shared by many accounts) of Walz and daughter Hope riding a roller coaster also was shared far and wide in the days after his announcement.
There were also plenty of clips rolling around the Tok from his big rally with VP Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. This video of Walz introducing himself from @cspanofficial earned 1.8 million views and 288k likes. And this one from @meidastouch of him brutally dismantling JD Vance (along with the aforementioned pretty funny couch joke!) was viewed 2.1 million times and was liked 297.1K times.
This “Midwesterner’s Guide to Tim Walz” from @world.shaker took the Chuck Norris concept and reworked it accordingly. He spliced in some real facts about Walz, while also deadpanning a bunch of jokes about what it means to be an endearing Midwest Dad (“he’ll slip gas money in your pocket and whisper ‘don’t tell mom’.”). It’s been viewed 1.3 million times and has 241.1K likes.
Here’s a post from @ndsafterdark about then-teacher and football Coach Walz helping to start a Gay/Straight Alliance Group to combat bullying toward his high school’s LGBT students. It has 1.3 million views and 238.6K likes.
Finally, we’ll let Minnesota resident Sheletta sum this up for us in this fun person-on-the-street style video from @ohsorandom1978.
Top posts: Kamala Harris
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 85,500 posts mentioning Harris on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 1.4 billion views.
17% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Harris were negative, 1% were neutral, and 82% were positive. These were the top ten most-viewed:
By our estimates, the most-viewed Harris post on TikTok this week was this @cnn clip of VP Harris herself calling out Donald Trump for his “divisiveness and disrespect.”
The @dailymail had two popular posts, one about the US/Russia prisoner swap and one sharing the phone call of VP Harris inviting Governor Walz to be her running mate.
We also saw a few big negative hits against Harris. @tulsigabbard was big-time mad that MSNBC appeared to share an edited video making it sound like Joe Rogan supported Harris when, according to Gabbard, he was not referring to Harris, but to Gabbard. And @cantcancelrobsmith was one of many creators to make fun of the way Harris speaks.
Top posts: Donald Trump
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 76,000 posts mentioning Trump on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 1.3 billion views.
89% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Trump were negative, 3% were neutral, and 8% were positive. These were the top ten most-viewed:
TikTok used to be MAGA-friendly territory. No more. The vast majority of posts mentioning Trump on the platform this week were brutal for the former President.
There were numerous videos about his racist comments about Kamala Harris. Here’s one from @thedailyshow and one from @cnn. Here’s a post about him beating up on Brian Kemp, Georgia’s kind of popular Republican Governor. And here’s a post from @celebs.against.trump where Pete Davidson pokes fun at Trump for not knowing how to read.
The top post showing some love to Donald Trump this week was shared by @dailymail and it was just Trump and streamer Adin Ross sitting in a Trump-personalized Cybertruck, jamming out to… we kid you not… All The Leaves Are Brown by The Mamas & The Papas. 🤷♂️
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/Age.
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.
“She doesn’t have that best wordin’ with sentences, even against Biden...does.” Those were the enlightened words of a Trump supporter in this viral, mocking man-on-the-street video from Democratic influencer @lukebeasleyofficial. And another video on the topic of Harris’ fitness for office includes this fake commercial about a “Kia Kamala” that “goes from zero to nominee with zero votes.” It was shared by user @ilypierce and received some big view numbers.
However, the vast majority of posts in the “fitness-to-serve” category were squarely focused on Trump. Here’s one from @waltermasterson about Trump being a convicted felon. Here’s another from @couriernewsroom featuring a group of Arizona Republicans formally endorsing Harris, “the adult in the room.”
The next most popular topics this week were Women’s Rights / Abortion and Election Integrity.
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 197 million new views and posted 32 videos. Their top-performing post of the week was this one, featuring Harris challenging Trump to a debate: “You got something to say, say it to my face.”
They also racked up some huge numbers with this photo slideshow that started with a photo of Donald Trump looking awkward at a laptop, captioned “Trump’s frequently asked questions,” and then showed him searching for things like “how to back out of a debate,” “do people really not like JD?” and “am i weird quiz.” This video currently has 6.1 million views and 1.1 million likes.
Over on Team Trump, they gained 48.8 million new views this past week and posted two videos. The first was Trump calling local Atlanta artist Artlanta up on stage to show off a painting of… Donald Trump. The second was Trump dancing (if that’s what you can call it) alongside @adinross to YMCA. It has 26.6 million views and 3.3 million likes.
Creator Spotlight: @casadimusic
CasaDi didn’t start out creating political content. In fact, their work wasn’t really political at all… until recently. But ever since Joe Biden stepped aside for Kamala Harris, these two producers have been making political bangers, using speeches from Harris, Walz… and one you’ve definitely seen, the clip of JD Vance saying he’s a “never Trump” guy (link below, we got you).”
They’ve done 8 political remix videos just over the last two weeks, some racking up tens or hundreds of thousands of views, some reaching millions.
In addition to the “Never Trump Guy” heater, here’s Tim Walz remixed talking about how “these are weird people.” Here’s one about Trump Mad. And here’s one that went proper viral (3.1 million views and 302.8K likes), remixing JD Vance saying he’s a Never Trump Guy.
It’s a banger!
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Taylor Lorenz had a solid deep dive into them and their story in a recent newsletter. One tidbit really stood out: “Neither producer was particularly excited by Biden, but when Harris became the nominee, they went all in.”
As you’ve seen throughout this newsletter… that definitely seems to be a trend.
News & platform updates
A new book chronicles how young women are moving left and becoming deeply involved in politics, whereas young men are moving to the right and mostly checking out.
TikTok is backing away from its rewards program under pressure from the EU, which claimed that this feature of the app made it too addictive and harmful, especially to children.
Influencers are feeling good about the new Democratic ticket – and gaining a whole lot of new followers because of it.
Spending even a little time on TikTok appears to negatively impact a woman’s body image.
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 newsletteris 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.
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