The former president Donald Trump has made the appeal to young voters, particularly younger men, a public pillar of his 2024 campaign. But a notable problem is that it is not present on a platform that uses a large number of them.
Trump has not purchased a single ad on Snapchat, effectively handing over the popular digital messaging platform to the vice president. Kamala Harriswhose campaign has invested more than 5.3 million dollars in ads in itaccording to company reports.
Harris has taken advantage of that unopposed space to highlight Trump’s anti-abortion record and present herself as a candidate for the future. Several of its ads are set to the upbeat beat of its theme song, Beyoncé’s anthem “Freedom.” Others are billed as “back-to-school homework assignments” urging college-age voters to do their homework on Trump’s right-wing policies.
Donald Trump (REUTERS/Marco Bello)
The former president’s reluctance to invest money in Snapchat (a radical turn from his previous campaigns) It is explained by the long-standing feud with Snap, its controlling company with offices in California, which banned Trump’s personal account shortly after the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Unlike other prominent platforms, Snap has not lifted the ban imposed on Trump’s personal account, which has drawn angry criticism from his campaign team. Although it does not allow Trump to make personal posts, the company has indicated that it is willing to sell political ads to his campaign, which must undergo internal fact-checking.
With the elections tied, Both the Trump and Harris campaigns have stepped up efforts to connect with Gen Z voters and millennials who check their news on social media instead of traditional news outlets and don’t yet know if they’ll go to the polls. polls in 2024. Convincing those voters to go to vote could help the side that succeeds achieve a victory.
Kamala Harris (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
“If young voters are as important a demographic as both campaigns say, then they should be using every means they have available to hook them.” said Kyle Tharp, a former Democratic strategist who now writes a digital politics newsletter called FWIW. “Snapchat seems like an obvious choice.”
Before dropping out of the race, President Joe Biden spent about $1.5 million on ads on Snapchat.
Snap claims it has more than 100 million users in the United Statesof whom approximately 80 percent are at least 18 years old and therefore eligible to vote. The platform has a higher percentage of users under 30 years old than other major technology applications.
Either way, Snapchat is not the main battleground where campaigns fight for young voters. The scale of political spending on Snapchat pales in comparison to spending on other tech platforms like Facebook and Google, into which both presidential campaigns plan to invest tens of millions of dollars. Additionally, the gap between Trump and Harris on Snapchat also reflects a more pronounced disparity in digital advertising: Harris has spent significantly more than Trump on online ads because her fundraising efforts have been more productive than his.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Harris is spending her campaign funds unnecessarily.
“A bunch of silly Snapchat ads aren’t going to make up for the fact that their terrible economic policies robbed young people of the American dream.”, opined Leavitt.
Additionally, he emphasized that Trump is seeking to engage in dialogue with younger voters through a series of interviews with popular online personalities, such as the Nelk Boys and “Bussin’ With the Boys,” as well as organic videos on TikTok. Trump, who had previously resisted participating in TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, signed up for the platform this year.
However, some digital strategists consider Snapchat an important tool because people use it to communicate with their friends, making it a more personal platform than some of its competitors.
The platform, created in 2011, allows users to send messages that disappear. The style of ephemeral communication soon caught the interest of college and high school students, who sometimes used it to exchange racy photos and memes.
Since then, the company has demonstrated a strong ability to reach Americans interested in politics. In 2020, it reported that it had worked collaboratively with the nonpartisan group TurboVote to register about 1.2 million people to vote. TikTok, another popular app with many young users, does not allow political ads, so Snapchat appears to be the ideal place to influence millennial and Gen Z voters.
“In contrast to Trump, who apparently is only willing to talk to voters in his base and who help him feel good about himself, we don’t want to give up any ground in building a broad and diverse coalition, so we talked directly with the voters who will decide this election,” said Harris campaign spokesman Seth Schuster.
Despite Snapchat’s popularity among young people, its user base is by no means a liberal monolith. About 51 percent of its users identify as Democrats or claim to have a preference for that ideology, while only 41 percent prefer Republicans, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.
Larger platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, lean more to the right, making them more favorable terrain for Trump. Additionally, the Pew study revealed that 60 percent of Snapchat users are women, which is another disadvantage for Trump. Polls show large numbers of young women support Harris.
