Since taking office in 2021, Joe Biden and his Democrat allies have sought favor with social media influencers — especially on the Chinese-owned video app TikTok. Biden campaign officials see TikTok as a powerful tool to influence and energize the youth vote for the 81-year-old Democrat incumbent, especially among the app’s more progressive users. However, following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, TikTok has increasingly become a source of anti-Biden content — especially among young progressives.
According to Pew Research, around one-third of adults under the age of 30 receive their news from videos on the TikTok app. Progressive influencers like Kahlil Greene wield huge audiences on the platform — something the Biden campaign had hoped would boost youth support for the octogenarian incumbent. Instead, the platform’s powerful progressive content creators have turned on Biden.
Analysis conducted by CredoIQ — a marketing firm specializing in social media’s political influence — reveals that more than 20 percent of top left-leaning TikTok influencers have posted anti-Biden content, amassing over 100 million views in the first four months of this year. The Israel-Hamas war and possible TikTok ban make up a bulk of the anti-Biden content.
“What I would be concerned about is kind of the wildfire anti-Biden movement leaping from anti-Biden progressives to a larger group of young people,” Ben Darr, president and founder of CredoIQ, said of his firms’s analysis. Several national presidential polls appear to corroborate Biden’s TikTok problem, with the Democrat incumbent virtually tied with his Republican challenger, Donald J. Trump, among voters under 30.
Despite Biden approving a potential ban on TikTok in late April, his presidential campaign has remained active on the Chinese-owned app. Additionally, The National Pulse reported in January that Priorities USA, a Democrat-aligned SuperPAC, will drop $1 million to boost pro-Biden messaging by top influencers on the app.