Let’s Get Political: How Social Media Is Shifting as the US Election Looms

As we all know, the US presidential election is coming up quickly on November 5th. And no matter what your thoughts are on candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, there’s one thing we can all agree on: The impacts of this political race are being felt everywhere.

Each day, we’re inundated with constant headlines updating us on every controversial remark, scrolling by creepy, AI deepfakes of candidates reduced to talking heads, and sitting through tense dinner table conversations with family during the holidays. The BNL team is all Canadian, so we can’t cast our votes in this race—but even still, we feel every rumble from our neighbours to the south.

One reason this election feels just as imminent and important to us Canadians is social media—more specifically, the ways platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok draw us into a more America-centric perspective. Suddenly, it’s not just the United States locked into a chaotic, polarizing presidential race, but the entire global community of the internet. This is a worldwide affair, and it’s one that affects nearly every aspect of the social media landscape.

There’s been plenty of investigation on the ways social media influences elections, from the rampant spread of misinformation to downright voter intimidation, but less focus is placed on the ways that the elections influence social media. As your resident experts, we’ve been paying close attention to every digital tremor, taking note of the ways the top social platforms are shifting and changing as we get closer to November 5th. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the changes we’ve seen, and what you can expect from socials through the tail end of the 2024 presidential election—and during future ones.

1. Accounts Tend to Take Strong Stances—Or None at All

Let’s not mince words—this is one of the most divisive and existential elections we’ve seen in the history of the Western world. With a razor-thin margin of undecided voters compared to previous years, most people have a very strong opinion on this year’s candidates, and there’s little that could change their minds. Because of this, we’ve seen an interesting dichotomy in the way brands and major accounts are positioning themselves online. 

There are two camps: Taking a hardline stance or avoiding taking one at all. 

Option 1: Taking a Stance

Each option has its pros and cons. When an account wholeheartedly endorses Trump or Harris, they firmly align themselves with people who agree and place themselves in opposition to those who don’t. Setting aside the ethics of supporting either candidate for a moment (that’s a whole other can of worms), this is a real risk-reward scenario, especially when Trump and Harris are locked into a dead heat. Will the support they gain from one candidate’s base be enough to risk losing the business of the other? 

Of course, not all accounts look at this so pragmatically—and for many of us, it’s impossible to set aside our personal and ethical concerns when things like reproductive rights, gender-affirming care, and separation of church and state are potentially at risk. And with a full-scale ground war raging in Ukraine and the relentless destruction of Palestine still ongoing, it’s more difficult than ever to separate politics from the rest of our identities—particularly on social media, which is increasingly becoming an avenue for social discourse. 

On another level, many companies in the US and beyond are worried about the economic impacts of the new president. This leaves them no choice but to be vocal about their support for whichever candidate they believe will benefit their business more.

Option 2: Staying Out of It

The other option is to avoid taking a public stance. The idea is to avoid upsetting the hardline supporters of either candidate, putting your business’ success above your own personal, political beliefs. In theory, this isn’t a bad idea—after all, not every brand needs to make a statement on nebulous political situations. But in some cases, apolitical accounts run the risk of coming off as apathetic, something many might take issue with in such a polarizing, emotionally-involved election.

Over the past few years, we’ve come to expect more brand activism from the accounts we follow, and these stances never fail to attract both intense praise and scathing criticism. Take Nike’s 2018 “Dream Crazy” campaign, where they endorsed football star Colin Kaepernick, who had recently made headlines for kneeling during the national anthem in solidarity with other Black Americans after the murder of George Floyd. Many people applauded Nike for aligning itself with the Black Lives Matter movement, but almost just as many boycotted the brand, vowed to never buy Nike again, or even burnt Nike gear for social media clout.

The Nike controversy was a microcosm compared to the multi-layered issues at play in the 2024 US election, leading more brands to avoid endorsing either candidate, lest they alienate part of their audience and open the door for competitors to steal their customers away by taking the opposing view.

2. Social Media Ads Get More Expensive

Social media is a hugely important tool for political campaigns, with candidates and advocacy groups ramping up their ad spending to ever greater heights as we approach election day. This means political ads dominate social media, and it also drives up the cost for anyone else looking to purchase ad space online. As you may know, ads on social media are sold on an auction basis—increased demand raises prices in a phenomenon known as auction crowding.

Because of auction crowding, accounts looking to purchase paid ads on social media need to up their budgets in order to get the space they need. This means brands need to spend far more time and money researching their base and segmenting each ad to ensure it reaches the right segment of users and offers a good ROI. Alternatively, many brands use fewer ads (or avoid them altogether) during times like these, instead opting for other tactics. These alternatives to traditional, paid social ads might include Instagram Stories ad placements (versus the more expensive feed ads), or moving ads to less competitive video platforms, such as Pinterest, TikTok or YouTube Shorts.

3. Organic Content Is On the Rise

As the election has heated up over the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in organic, authentic advertising methods over more conventional approaches. One example is with a renewed emphasis on user-generated content, or UGC. This is a practice where brands encourage their customers to generate content promoting their offerings. Not only does this cut down on the time and money needed to create content for socials, but it also adds a layer of authenticity and trust. There are a number of ways you might rustle up additional UGC for your brand, such as:

• Encouraging or incentivizing customers to share video reviews

• Creating a campaign to popularize unique trends or hashtags that place your business at the forefront

• Running social media contests

• Use social media listening tools to find conversations about your brand on socials

• Recruiting brand ambassadors to promote your business online

Another way we’ve seen brands prioritize organic content is through influencer partnerships. Not only does this extend your reach and provide more trust in your offerings, but it can also be a great way to communicate your brand values on important issues (such as the election) while maintaining a degree of separation. This lets you connect with those who agree with you and the influencer while insulating you somewhat from people who might be opposed.

4. Political Candidates Are Acting Like Influencers

There’s no denying the importance of influencers when we look at the ways social media is changing. The influencer approach to these platforms has proven successful at building audiences, delivering messages, and driving engagement (and profits), so it’s really no surprise that the top dogs of both the Republican and Democrat parties are making themselves more available for publicity opportunities usually reserved for internet personalities, rappers, and Hollywood celebs.

Normally, presidents and candidates only speak in highly managed, manicured settings, delivering carefully rehearsed speeches from presidential podiums as they address the entire nation as a whole. But lately, both Trump and Harris have been engaging in (slightly) more down-to-earth interviews, blurring the lines between internet personality and people’s representative.

For example, Donald Trump appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on October 26th. Rogan, who previously called Trump an “existential threat to democracy itself” and for a long time refused to have the former president on the show, spent three hours in conversation with Trump, broadcasting him to some 18 million YouTube subscribers and 16 million Spotify followers. 

We’ve also seen the exact same approach on the other side of the fence, with Kamala Harris appearing on the wildly popular Call Her Daddy podcast on October 6th. Call Her Daddy, run by Alex Cooper, is the second most popular podcast on Spotify (after The Joe Rogan Experience), boasting about 5 million weekly listeners. Harris has also made appearances elsewhere online, such as doing the WIRED Autocomplete Interview, which normally hosts movie stars and musicians. 

On both sides of the party lines, we’ve seen a renewed emphasis on this influencer-esque behaviour, breaking down some of the media barriers that have insulated presidential candidates from us ‘regular people’ since forever. 

5. Engagement Reigns Supreme (At All Costs)

Not all the changes we’ve seen on social media this year have been positive. If you read our guide on keeping up with the Instagram algorithm, you know that engagement is by far the most important metric in expanding your audience. Most brands are aware of this, and have realized that engagement is engagement—no matter where it comes from. 

The next time you’re scrolling through Facebook and spot a popular post about the election, have a scroll through the comments. Odds are, you’ll find hundreds of strangers arguing with each other on huge, existential issues like human rights or immigration. These conversations are almost guaranteed to not change anyone’s mind, but it doesn’t matter to the original poster—because every comment counts towards their engagement.

Some accounts have taken this cynical approach to getting engagement on their posts, deliberately featuring provocative, divisive, or even outright false content in order to bait people into commenting and pushing the account further up the algorithm. This can take many forms, from a simple endorsement of a controversial Trump platform point, to fake news about Harris, to the worrying advent of AI-generated presidential deepfakes which can create convincing videos of either candidate saying literally anything. 

6. Certain Platforms Are Getting Louder Ahead of the Election

In tandem with the auction crowding we’ve seen in paid ad spaces, many social media platforms themselves are becoming increasingly noisy and chaotic as we get closer to election day. While some platforms have supposedly taken unbiased steps to limit political disinformation (such as Instagram’s controversial choice to automatically limit political content on your feed or ban news content in Canada), other platforms embrace the election race chaos and the increased traffic it brings.

Looking back at 2016, when Trump first arrived on the political scene, the social media landscape was far less complex than it is today. Heck, there was really only Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter making noise. Now, we have TikTok, Facebook and Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts, Twitter’s rebranding as X.com, and the controversial Rumble platform (just to name a few) all making plenty of noise.

We see this uptick most clearly on YouTube, TikTok, and X.com—all of which allow political content (even when it’s divisive, polarizing, or outright false) much more freely than other platforms. Of course, political noise is running rampant on more niche partisan platforms, such as the Canadian video-hosting site Rumble, which is financially backed by Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance and partnered with Trump’s infamous TRUTH Social platform.

With over 100 million mentions of the US Election on X.com from January to June 2024 alone, it’s becoming harder for other accounts to cut through all the noise. It’s forcing accounts to find new ways to reach their audiences, either by taking a stance on the election or steering clear of the topic completely.

The Bottom Line

With a topic as big as this, it’s almost impossible to provide a tidy list of best practices or a reassuring word about the future of social media marketing. It’s a tired cliché at this point, but it’s true: We’re living in deeply uncertain times. At the time of writing, we’re at a near-unprecedented crossroads where the outcome of a single presidential election threatens the livelihoods, human rights, and physical safety of billions. 

People are anxious at best, and in a deep state of existential dread at worst—a potent mix when combined with social media’s addictive algorithms and documented tendency to show you content that will upset and outrage you.

Rather than attempting to find a ‘solution’ to these problems, we feel it’s important as social media experts to document the rapidly shifting landscape as we see it, analyzing where we can and, hopefully, charting a new course through the murky mixture of social media and politics. 

If you, like so many others, are feeling concerned about finding your own path through this new normal, we’d be happy to have a conversation and collaborate on a new approach for your brand. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.