The internet reacts to J.D. Vance

Trump’s Truth Social post announcing Vance as his running mate sent ripples across the platforms this week.

Jul 19, 2024

FWIW, this week’s newsletter is sponsored by Civic Shout

After several months of heated veepstakes competition over on the Right, we finally have a winner: on Monday, Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that Senator J.D. Vance – a once never-Trumper turned staunch supporter – would be his 2024 running mate.

It seems like many Americans (who hadn’t been obsessively following along with the X/Twitter VP rumor mill like we had) reacted by saying… which one is he again?

Trump announced that he was selecting Vance at 3:04 PM EST on July 15th, and it appears there was an immediate and dramatic spike in Googling across America. (Google scales its search trends relatively from 1-100, with 100 being peak popularity/the subject that is getting the most searches on the site.) And interestingly, the states with the most searches for J.D. Vance included some pretty crucial battlegrounds, like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Virginia.

To be clear, one would definitely expect a big spike in searches for any nominee that Trump selected – but in this case, this huge surge also gestures to the pretty clear dynamic that Trump’s selection created: J.D. Vance has only been in government for less than two years, and most people, even in the Republican party, don’t really know who he is. So now, Democrats and Republicans alike are in a race to define him to the voters.

And one of the central arenas in which to define J.D. Vance for the American public is, of course, the digital one. I first took a look at CrowdTangle to see how J.D. Vance as VP pick was playing out on Facebook and Instagram.

On Facebook, the anti-Trump Vance posts are pretty dominant. Here is a look at four of the top 5 posts on Facebook by interactions (likes, comments, and shares) mentioning J.D. Vance in the last week:

The Democratic messaging about Vance’s flip-flop and Vice President Harris’s strategic decision to immediately position herself against Vance seems to be performing pretty well – and is being championed by some well-known Dem Facebook powerhouses like The Other 98% and Occupy Democrats.

Instagram, however, is a bit of a different story. The top-performing post mentioning J.D. Vance in the last week was, by far and away, this one from @thedailyshow that called out Vance’s past anti-Trump comments. But, at the same time, posts from @tulsigabbard supporting Vance and from @foxnews on Vivek Ramaswamy singing his praises also were amongst the top 10 at the time of my search.

Notably, several of the very bro-y, right-wing-adjacent news aggregator Instagram accounts also had top posts about Vance (like this one and this one) that were fairly neutral, but looking at the comments section… the reaction to him from their audience appears to be lukewarm at best.

It’s worth noting yet again that political content on Meta platforms is still pretty wonky, given their imposed limitations. So I also took a look over at TikTok, specifically at the top-liked videos mentioning “J.D. Vance” and/or “Vance” in the past week.

Interestingly, 3 of the highest-liked posts with this criteria at the time of my search were all actually centered around Vivek Ramaswamy, former GOP contender and Vance’s old friend, with popular conservative commentator @theoldermillennial.1 actually opening his video by saying he wished Trump picked Ramaswamy.

Other top-liked videos like this one from @abcnews included the expected coverage of Vance at the RNC from news accounts – and there were also a fair amount of top-liked videos that trolled Vance and Trump like this one from @johnstone.gregory and this one from @julesandthevibe.

All in all, it’s safe to say that the online response to J.D. Vance as Trump’s VP pick thus far has been a bit underwhelming and tepid – even from GOP friendlies.

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Digital ad spending, by the numbers:

FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $11.7 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:

America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC that is being bankrolled by some tech billionaires including Elon Musk, spent a whopping $168,000+ this past week on Facebook + Instagram ads. The ads feature videos of Trump urging supporters to vote early and/or request absentee ballots (after he, you know, attacked these voting methods repeatedly in 2020) and are running in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada.

Speaking of the Trump campaign, they had previously been running Facebook + Instagram ads under Donald Trump and Lara Trump’s name – and now, they’ve thrown senior Trump advisor Alina Habba into the mix. The ads feature a TikTok-style video from Habba asking for donations.

Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $7 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Kari Lake’s Senate campaign is running video ads featuring a video of Lake and her fellow MAGAite and “dear friend” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green in which Green makes a fundraising ask for Lake’s campaign and tells voters they “would be an awesome team in Washington” together.

On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $3.4 million on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:

…and on X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers have spent over $6 million on the platform in 2024. Here are the top spending accounts:

Your 2024 digital dispatch

FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden campaigns year-to-date:

As of last week, the Biden campaign has spent $58 million in total on digital ads in 2024 thus far, whereas the Trump campaign has spent only $12 million in total.

In the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump last Saturday, it appears that both the Biden and the Trump campaigns stopped their spending and paused ads for at least a day on Facebook + Instagram, and the Biden campaign also paused their ads on Google. It appears, however, that the Trump campaign actually increased their ad spend on Google + YouTube immediately following the shooting.

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More from around the internet:

ICYMI, we launched a new TikTok-focused newsletter last week called FYP. Our first full edition is live and delves into how TikTok is helping Trump play into this new “gangster” image of his – you can check it out here. And make sure you’re subscribed for all the info you need about this powerful platform and how it's affecting our political playing field as we head into the first-ever “TikTok” election.

Casey Newton examines how, after the shooting at the Trump rally last weekend, conspiracy theories and misinformation spread pretty much unchecked all over social media – which highlighted the extent to which platforms are taking a hands-off approach to political content this election.

When it comes to turnout targets (and, of course, the voters that campaigns are trying to reach with their content), this presidential election has largely become framed as “girls vs. boys."

After Elon Musk officially endorsed Donald Trump this past weekend, X/Twitter seems to have added little pro-Trump icons that automatically appear on the end of hashtags like #MAGA and #Trump2024.

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