The major midterm candidates on TikTok, ranked
Cool? Cringe? At least these politicians are trying.
When we first wrote about TikTok use in the midterms several months ago, only a handful of major candidates had joined the Gen Z-focused viral video app. That has since changed, with over 30 candidates running for Senate or Governor (and many more running for House) using the platform to reach voters. In this week’s FWIW, we’ll share who’s on it, who’s not, and whose content is resonating the most with TikTok users.
But first…
By the numbers
FWIW, here were the top-spending political advertisers on Facebook + Instagram last week:
Looking at our detailed spending data, we noticed that Democratic candidates running in competitive races for U.S. Senate spent around $623,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Compare that to the just $39,000 spent by Republicans - a shocking deficit. In competitive House races, Democrats outspent Republicans on the platform 3 to 1, and in gubernatorial contests, Democrats outspent Republicans 8 to 1.
One of the highest-spending political advertisers on Facebook nationwide over the past few days has been Jay Chen, a Democrat running to unseat GOP Rep. Michelle Steel in California’s 45th Congressional District. Chen’s enormous digital investment is relatively unique - House candidates don’t typically spend this much in such a short period, especially on persuasion-focused ads, many of which are in Chinese or Vietnamese. It’s safe to say pretty much everyone in Orange County is seeing his content in their Facebook feeds.
Meanwhile, here were the top political advertisers on Google platforms last week, including YouTube:
Over the past 30 days, just 50 political advertisers have comprised the majority of Google political ad spending. The majority of that spend has come from Democrats and their allies. Here’s a rough breakdown.
Yes, but… Dan Pfeiffer wrote this week that Republicans’ “counter-offensive” has yet to really begin, and at least online, we’ve seen some movement. GOP outside groups including Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund have increased their digital spending, primarily on YouTube, over the past two weeks.
Meanwhile, we missed this from a few weeks ago: the DSCC has spent over $105,000 targeting Arizona voters with a dating-themed YouTube ad featuring U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters’ shirtless pics from bodybuilding dot com. 😂
… and here are the top political ad spenders on Snapchat so far this year:
Meanwhile, in Texas…
We’ve written recently about how the Texas Governor’s race is tightening, due to some strong local organizing and a lot of hate for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Our friends at Texas Public Heritage have launched a new campaign along those lines to tell voters in the Lone Star state about Abbott's attacks on teachers and public education. Their latest ad puts a new twist on traditional Republican framing to hit him where it hurts most -- jobs and the border. Watch and share the "American Wages" ad below + give them a follow:
From around the internet
The Recount pointed out that while Republicans rolled out their shocking plans for a national abortion ban on Wednesday, cable TV news coverage was too busy covering Queen Elizabeth’s coffin *for the 6th straight day.*
Our friends at Who Targets Me launched a US midterms edition of their browser extension to show users more about the political Facebook ads they’re being targeted with. Learn more + get started >>
How the fight was won: In this week’s issue of our Campaigner newsletter, we spoke with activist Melissa Byrne, who shared her experience organizing for President Biden’s executive action to cancel student debt. Read + subscribe here >>
Content shared organically on social media platforms like Facebook can have just as large an impact as paid advertising. Which midterm candidates are receiving the most reactions, comments, and shares on their campaign’s Facebook posts? Here’s the answer >>
The major midterm candidates on TikTok, ranked
This is the first election cycle where several dozen major party, statewide candidates are actively using TikTok to reach younger voters. According to our analysis, out of over 100 candidates on the ballot for U.S. Senate or Governor this November, we counted 31 that are actively using the app. 24 of those 31 candidates are Democrats, and 7 are Republicans. We should note there are likely dozens (or hundreds) more candidates for U.S. House and other offices that are on TikTok - and the data below only reflects the largest statewide campaigns.
FWIW, here are the top ten Senate or Governor candidates, ranked by their following on the platform:
Maybe unsurprisingly, Dr. Oz boasts the largest owned audience of over 1.2 million followers. Those followers mostly can be attributed to his past life as a celebrity fraudster, as his first TikTok (a super cringe dance video) was shared way back in 2019. Other campaigns with the largest followings include Beto O’Rourke, Gavin Newsom, and Charles Booker, who’s running against Sen. Rand Paul in Kentucky.
However, TikTok users don’t necessarily have to follow a candidate to see and engage with their content - that’s kind of the whole point of the app! Instead, TikTok’s algorithm pushes video content to users that the company thinks they’ll want to watch. A better metric then, is looking at how many total “likes” each candidate has received on their videos:
By this metric, Dr. Oz remains ahead but is closer to other candidates’ levels of engagement on their videos. In terms of sheer number of views, as far as we can tell, these are the most viewed TikToks from the above-listed candidates:
The most-viewed TikTok from these candidates comes from Charles Booker, and coincidentally features a speech from Sen. Cory Booker (confusing, we know) during Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings. It’s been viewed 8.9 million times.
Dr. Oz’s most viewed video (4.4 million views) is the original version of his infamous crudites shopping video, which we’re pretty sure is a bad thing for his campaign. John Fetterman’s most viewed TikTok (2.4 million views) is a hilarious vid locating Oz’s home state on a map.
It’s not all fun and games: both Gavin Newsom’s most viewed video (seen 3.7 million times) and Beto O’Rourke’s most viewed content (2.3 million views) feature the candidates talking about abortion rights after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
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We have some honorable mentions here too: Val Demings has recently reshared a legendary roblox video, and the viral “it’s corn” video trend has made its way to the campaigns, with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s campaign and Iowa Democratic Gov. nominee Deidre Dejear creating corn-related content. Among Republicans, far-right gubernatorial candidates Darren Bailey in Illinois, Heidi Ganahl in Colorado, and Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts get kudos for at least trying to use the app.
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To be clear, a lot of candidate content on TikTok remains kind of cringe, and generally political content is dwarfed in terms of views and engagement by non-political creators on the app. However, TikTok has to be taken more seriously by political campaigns, and that’s starting to happen, at least on the Democratic side. It’s also important to consider the potential for and future of political engagement on the platform heading into Election Day and beyond.
Who did we miss? Let us know your favorite 2022 campaign TikToks on Twitter - tag us at @FWIWNews.
This statewide candidate in AZ has a great TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@laurenkubyforcorpcomm/video/715968202662543697
FYI the Tik Tok graph mislabels Newsom