After President Joe Biden stepped down and Harris announced her candidacy, excitement around the new campaign quickly grew. KamalaHQ’s TikTok account grew fivefold in followers in its first week, the campaign told WIRED, and new Harris-focused content received 232 million views and more than 33 million likes. This far surpassed Trump’s total like count — at the time of publication, Trump’s account had nearly 30 million total likes, compared to Harris’s 60 million.
Beyond the engagement data, the campaign also noticed that TikTok users and content creators were creating pro-Harris content at a rate previously inconceivable with Biden at the helm.
“We can now access the For You page in a different way because the number of people creating content on KamalaHQ has grown so much,” Lauren Kapp, who manages the Harris campaign’s TikTok account, tells WIRED. “We’ve also seen that in our engagement with influencers and celebrities. There’s a huge increase in them commenting on us and sharing our content on KamalaHQ in a way that wasn’t really happening on BidenHQ.”
This has created a feedback loop where followers create content that the campaign remixes on its own. “Our audience is always encouraging us to use different sounds and trends, and we’re responding to them – we’re taking advantage of these viral moments and engaging directly with our audience in a way that they’re excited about,” says Kapp. “Our comments section is flooded with people saying, ‘Oh my god, I was waiting for you to do this! ’ It creates a community with our followers, allowing our content to be shared widely and organically.”
It’s not just Harris who has benefited from a surge of digital support for her campaign. Political influencers and content creators are racking up followers, likes, and engagement. Several creators who spoke to WIRED said their posts on platforms like TikTok and Instagram were receiving more likes and positive comments than when Biden was at the top of the ticket.
“The response to anything that includes Kamala’s name in a post is incredibly high — I’ve never, ever seen anything like that with Biden,” Saadia Mirza, a political creator with around 100,000 followers on TikTok, tells WIRED. Mirza describes herself as a “Never-Trumper” who compiles news and statuses from around the web. “I don’t know what her numbers are, but I can tell you that just from my posts, I’ve noticed that the engagement, the shares, the comments, people responding to them, the DMing is extremely high.”
“I’ve definitely seen a shift in enthusiasm, people are getting more involved in politics, participating in the conversation, sharing more things that they didn’t share before,” says singer, actress and political influencer Malynda Hale. Hale posts news commentary for her 50,000 Instagram followers. “And a lot of people I’ve talked to are like, ‘Oh, I’m not really into politics.’ They’re definitely into politics now, because this is a crucial election.”
For Kelton Allen, a TikTok creator from Florida, the excitement he’s witnessed online has seeped into his daily life, too.
