TikTok Influencers Come to the Main Line to Reach Young Voters in Pennsylvania

“Hey Siri, guide me to a Harris victory in 2024,” said a content creator named Russell Ellis, known as jolly_good_ginger, he said into the phone while driving a black SUV in a video for social media. Ellis has 5.2 million followers on TikTok and 287,000 followers on Instagram.

“The path to a Harris victory in 2024 must pass through Pennsylvania,” the automated voice replied.

“OK, that’s Pennsylvania!” he said, pressing the gas pedal, and gathering other content creators along the way Gladwyne, elegant An enclave in Montgomery County where a house was rented for them.

This The extravagant Main Line residence was transformed into an election-themed “content house,” complete with a Harris-Walz-branded corn hole on the outside. Twenty creators — 10 from Pennsylvania, 10 visiting from other states to spread the word about voting in a key battleground state — were scheduled to spend the weekend there. They were organized by Amplify, a $25 million communications initiative focused on key states and funded by the Democratic donor center Way to Win.

Amplify, which estimated that the 20 creators had a combined reach of more than 21 million, sees creators as the key to achieving teenage voters, a notoriously unreliable voting bloc that could assist Harris win the election — if they choose her.

For both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, memes have played a major role in their campaigns this election cycle. (That’s where the “brother” rebranding of Harris’ campaign and animal eating memes (which went viral following Trump’s false claim that immigrants in Ohio were eating pets).

Meanwhile, on the Internet, media from across the political spectrum, including extreme ones, are competing for attention. AND right-wing influencers like Andrew Tate, Tucker CarlsonAND Joe Roganwho spread disinformation and conspiracy theories.

AND Earlier this month, the Justice Department charged a network of Russian election interference actors with illegally targeting voters in key battleground states through right-wing influencers.

There’s no doubt that the online attention economy is key to the election. Both the RNC and DNC hosted creators for the first time this year. Harris’ campaign has its own The Creators of Kamala creates a network and invites influential people to campaign events.

Human rights groups have tapped into their own creator groups, and last week a up-to-date network was launched through Progressive The future coalition to recruit small-scale creators who may post content only for their friends and family but will still have an impact on an election that many voters follow through on social media rather than established news outlets.

“The saturation of places where people can go for information is so huge now because everyone can have a platform,” said Annie Wu Henry, a creator and strategist at Amplify who previously worked for Sen. John Fetterman and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes. “There are so many different types of media now, so as a political space, we have to make sure that we’re investing and being visible in all of those different spaces.”

Here’s the decision to rent the Gladwyne estate and house 20 influencers in a Harris-style fashion house.

Stronger together

The creators spent a busy and integrating weekend. Amplify hosted a workshop on Pennsylvania news and the economy, and in the evenings the creators went to Phillies games together, hung out at the Xfinity Bar I’m doing “Karaoke for Kamala”,” AND he interviewed people on the street about the elections.

And perhaps most importantly: they created content together. And by co-posting and sharing other people’s content, they not only reached their own followers, but also crossed networks and extended their reach. (Amplifying, in the language of their host.)

In one of the video sketches, Matt Gordoncreator of 455,700 followers on TikTok who goes by the pseudonym usmcangryveteran and embodies Project 2025, a controversial conservative roadmap for the next Republican administration, throwing a game of beer pong by Harris-Walz and pushing two creators into the house pool.

“I am Project 2025, and you are a woman who wants to decide about her body!” he shouted.

Two other creators at home retweeted the video to their TikTok followers, reaching hundreds of thousands of people. The post garnered 12,600 likes.

One of the creators thrown into the pool was Alex Cascio, known as casalmonwhich is based in DC

“When you’re a content creator, you’re just a guy in your bedroom writing a script and doing research, editing videos,” Cascio said. “It’s like everyone else… so anytime I have an opportunity to add tools to my arsenal to be more effective at communicating the messages that are important to me, I’m like, yeah, sign me up.”

Cascio, who grew up in Michigan, said she knew Pennsylvania was a swing state but didn’t realize its importance until she came to Content House. She said it was “mind-opening” for her and other creators to learn how crucial a win in Pennsylvania is to completing the puzzle of winning the Electoral College.

“Now I know I need to create more content related to Pennsylvania and make sure I connect with those people,” she said. Cascio has 73,600 followers on TikTok and 36,600 followers Instagram.

Amplify took the creators to an event organized by Task Force called the “Greedflation Market” that was set up outside the North Bowl in Northern Liberties, featuring photo-ready innovative messages about the economy. A balloon arch, free ice cream and “Hotties for Harris” bandanas adorned with images of cats, coconuts and reproductive rights lured passersby to the event to learn about greedflation, a term coined by Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey to blame inflation on enormous corporations that rake in huge profits while raising prices for consumers.

During the event, attendees could choose a left or right path that showed what the economy would look like under Harris and Trump’s economic policies. The left path showed Harris’ policies in a positive airy for average American families, while the right path showed a system designed to benefit corporations, Big Pharma and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

The creators posted selfies with the slogan “Make America broke again” that were used as props, mocking Trump’s slogan. Amplify found that the photos and videos taken there have been collectively viewed millions of times, mostly by residents of Pennsylvania.

One of the creators in Northern Freedoms The event was 33-year-old Jasmine Duke, a Philadelphia-based creator known as diaryfamadblackveganwho has 106,000 followers on Instagram and 67,200 followers on TikTokBy teaming up with Duke, who posts about being vegan, Democrats aim to reach people whose algorithms may be more focused on food than politics.

“I stand at the intersection of blackness, veganism and womanhood, so there are politics to all of that,” Duke said. “… This election year, it’s been my whole journey to make sure that I’m speaking out about that more and more, because I have this gift of influence that I don’t mess around with.”

At last week’s launch conference of the up-to-date Future Coalition network, AB Burns-Tucker, Californian entrepreneur a lawyer who also participated in the work of Montco Content House, talked about how creators can bring politics into topics they care about, such as health and fashion. Burns-Tucker, whose pseudonym is I’mlegallyhypedescribes his work as law and politics in African American Vernacular English, also known as AAVE.

Burns-Tucker, which has 712,300 TikTok followers and 93,700 Instagram entourage, transformed politicians’ “kitchen table” topics into “group messaging” topics to reach a teenage audience.

“There are ways to be authentic in your messages,” she said during the conversation. “… How would you talk about this issue in your group text message with your friends?”

The Future Coalition creator network was promoted by big-name creators like Claudia Conway, TikTok-famous daughter of Trump ally Kellyanne Conway and Republican anti-Trump activist George Conway, but unlike Amplify, it targets people with between 200 and 1,500 followers, its executive director said Corryn Freeman he said.

Freeman said the 501c4 organization’s creators program looking for employees and train 1,000 to 5,000 people to “flood the internet” with “organic content” aimed at teenage voters, especially undecided voters in key swing states who are thinking about sitting out the election on single issues. The effort is being funded primarily by Future Democrats PAC, although it is not paying the creators, Freeman said.

Back at the Gladwyne content house, Santayana’s Penalties, 27, Philadelphia-based non-binary fashion and lifestyle creator with 13,900 Instagram followers and 7,834 TikTok followers, mostly queer people ages 18-34, sat on a green velvet couch, interviewing Ellis, an Army veteran from North Carolina, and Gordon, a Marine Corps veteran from Kentucky who now lives in New York. Santayana interviewed the two left-wing men with enormous beards, asking questions like what unites the veteran community and the queer community, and what would they say if their child admitted to coming out.

This video has been viewed almost 26,000 times and liked 1,000 times Santayana’s Instagram profilebut Santayana released a film with two other creators at home “I’m looking for the nearest closet” If Trump is re-elected – The video has been viewed more than 363,000 times and liked almost 5,000 times on the platform.

In another video recorded at home, Burns-Tucker, a lawyer, taught a “white women’s class for Harris.” She co-posted the sketch with three other creators who appeared in the Instagram video, gaining over 24,500 likes and 13,500 shares on Instagram. TThis movie also got 22,000 likes, over 82,000 views and over 3,200 shares on TikTok.

“I heard he wants to tax my unrealized capital gains,” one woman said.

“Honey, are you worth at least $100 million?” Burns-Tucker retorted. “Then this has nothing to do with you, and in fact, her economic policies will help you. Go!”