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2024 Election Headquarters

Your 360° view of presidential campaign performance on site and on social

August Updates

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The Candidates

Engagement and Views on Site and Social

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Candidate Engaged Time on Site

Huge spikes in engagement for Donald Trump and Joe Biden leveled off after their respective assassination attempt and withdrawal from the race. During the month of August, Kamala Harris averaged more daily engaged time. She averaged 497k engaged hours per day while Mr. Trump averaged 451k and Mr. Biden averaged 435k.

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Candidate Pageviews on Site

In August, Trump and Biden averaged a similar amount of daily pageviews (36.1M and 36.4M, respectively) while Kamala Harris, buoyed by the Democratic National Convention, averaged just shy of 41 million pageviews per day. Pageviews for Harris peaked at almost 59 million on August 20, the second day of the convention, an 85% increase from the day before the festivities started. 

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Biden vs. Trump YouTube Viewership

Over the past 6 months, Trump averaged 2X as many YouTube views as Biden. However, the week of the June 27th debate, viewership about Biden gained momentum. Viewership about Trump increased by 160% the week of the debate, while Biden’s increased by 186%. 

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Facebook Audience Demographics

Kamala Harris has 7% more women viewers on Facebook than Donald Trump. Interestingly, Trump has a slightly younger skewing audience, as men 18-44 make up 30% of his audience and 23.6% of Harris’s.

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Social Audience Demographics

The largest age demographic on Facebook is 55+, making up 41% of all viewership. What’s interesting is the male audience of 45-54-year-olds is actually smaller than the audience of 25-34 and 35-44-year-olds on Facebook.

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Social Audience Demographics

On YouTube, men make up about 77% of all US presidential viewership.

Top Political Topics

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Top Topics on YouTube

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Harris’s and Trump’s respective YouTube audiences share some similarities in the political topics they care about. Harris’s audience is more likely to watch content about Guns & Politics, Racism, and Social Issues than Trump’s audience. Meanwhile, their differing interests reveal the priorities of Republican and Democrat voters. 

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Almost 30% of Biden’s YouTube audience watched content about Gun Control in September 2023, after he established the first-ever White House Office of Gun Control Prevention to address the gun violence plaguing America.

Over the past year, an average of 36% of Donald Trump’s YouTube audience also watched videos about Freedom of Speech.
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Top Topics on Site

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Our analysis of on-site engagement with popular election issues shows that readers continue to spend more time with topics like education and economic policy than abortion or immigration.

In the past two months, engagement with crime and gun news surged after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, increasing over 255% on July 14th. 

The only topic to surpass that total daily engagement was Israel / Palestine on October 8th, 2023.

Note: A previous update mistakenly inflated engagement with climate change.

Data Bites

Snackable insights on swing states, wedge issues, and third-party candidates.

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Walz Starts Slow, but Ends Up on Top

When it first became apparent that Kamala Harris would need a new running mate, Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly received much more engaged time than Tim Walz. Over the ensuing weeks, however, Walz closed the gap, and on the day of his official announcement, readers spent 645,000 engaged hours with articles about him.

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TikTok Top Platform for Walz

Prior to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Tim Walz had very little traction on social media. When he entered the VP conversation, however, daily engagement on multiple platforms increased sharply. On TikTok, for example, the Minnesota governor saw 1.5 million engagements on August 7th alone. 

TUB_ Kamala HQ - TikTok Engagements@2x

Harris Enters Race, Surges on TikTok

Since Joe Biden's decision to step down and endorse Kamala Harris, engagement with the VP on TikTok has surged. Her 27 million engagements in the last week total more than the rest of the year combined.

 

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Pressure Builds on Biden to Step Down 

Following the US presidential debate, many media publishers and Americans questioned Biden’s ability to win the race. The discussion generated 250 million YouTube views in the 3 weeks following. Viewership peaked on July 9th, after Biden’s NATO address.

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Trump Assassination Attempt on a Global Stage

The media publisher posting the most YouTube content about the assassination attempt is Sky News Australia. Out of the top ten publishers, seven are Indian and only two are American: CBS News and Forbes Breaking News.

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Site Pageviews About Trump Skyrocket

The day before the attempted assassination on Trump, pageviews about the former president were around 40 million with 1 million engaged hours. The day after the shooting, pageviews soared by 5x to 220 million, while engaged time grew by 3x.

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US Presidential Debate Wins for Best Comedy

Tubular’s new Video Trends feature indicates that “comedy” and “humor” were among the fastest growing trends that sprung off the June 27th debate, totaling +150 YouTube videos for a combined +20 million views in 7 days.

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Views Surge After US Presidential Debate

YouTube views on Trump increased by 160% the week of the debate while Biden views surged by 186%. 

 

 

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Alternate Candidates’ Post-Debate Bump

While Trump and Biden still dominated our attention in the hours after the debate, the number of articles about Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saw an increase that began after 4am EST on June 28. Average engagement with these articles also jumped from about 25 seconds to more than 60 seconds the day after the debate. 

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Mexico Elects Its First Female President

TikTok amassed 75% of overall viewership about the 2024 Mexican election from June 2023 to June 2024. While Claudia Sheinbaum won in the polls, Gálvez won on social. From April 1, 2024 to June 14, #XochitlGalvez garnered 3.47 billion views — 80% more than #ClaudiaSheinbaum.

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Modi's Engagement Pays Off at Polls

From January through May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi averaged more than 4x the engagement of Rahul Gandhi, the representative of the opposition Congress party. After declaring victory on June 4, Modi’s engagement soared to 15x his previous daily averaged engaged hours.

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Engagement with Trump Verdict 

On May 30th, about 15 minutes after the guilty verdict was read, engagement with Trump-related content soared to a peak of 12,265,867 seconds per minute, and didn't return to pre-verdict levels until June 1.

 

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Trump Hush Money Trial Views Surge

Trump’s hush money trial drew 1.1 billion views on YouTube from Apr. 1 – Jun. 3. On TikTok, top hashtags around this topic included #votetrump and #funnymoments. MSNBC's most viewed TikTok video featured Robert De Niro criticizing Trump to reporters.

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Topics Engaging the Swing States

Climate change remains the most popular topic in all 7 swing states we’re watching, but when we look closer at Pennsylvania, we see that articles related to Israel/Palestine are averaging the third-most engaged hours.

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Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life 

While pro-choice and pro-life content both had a similar audience overlap with abortion content throughout the year, pro-life content became much more prominent in March and April.
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Trump’s Arrest Tops the TikTok Charts

The #1 most watched and engaged TikTok video about the US Presidential Elections and swing state Georgia is a repurposed television clip posted by CBS Evening News discussing Trump’s surrender at the Fulton County Jail.

 
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Arizona Abortion Ban 

From April 8–14th, YouTube coverage about the abortion ban in Arizona got nearly 14 million views in a single week. The most watched video was a clip from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert discussing the issue, which won 1.7 million YouTube views in just 3 days. 

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Trump’s Trial Drives TikTok Views

In April 2024, YouTube viewership about Trump’s Criminal Trial climbed to over 310 million. On TikTok, the most watched video was posted by MSNBC and won 6.6 million views in 7 days. The video features a dismissed juror from his trial who remarked “He looks less orange”.

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RFK Jr. Leans into TikTok 

While neither Trump nor Biden are on TikTok, RFK Jr. has posted more than 160 videos on the platform in 2024, accumulating 97.9 million views and 16 million engagements. RFK's monthly TikTok views surged by 258% from January to March.

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