Social media is introducing Kamala Harris to young voters. But will it get her votes?

Kamala Harris is aiming to become the next U.S. president and her online fans are doing their part to boost her bid for the Oval Office — in part, by sharing attention-getting memes that feature the presidential hopeful.

These brief, visual snippets of curated content are a method of getting people’s attention — in this case, younger American voters — and to get Harris on their radar.

Young adults are particularly key to Democrats’ hopes for the presidency, and the Democrats have enjoyed an advantage among younger U.S. voters in multiple elections.

Observers say memes have the ability to shine attention on a candidate. But they require finesse to reach the desired audience — and to sound the right note.

“It’s a way to basically ingratiate yourself with that particular generation,” said Philip Mai, the co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Boost from ‘Brat’ reference?

One meme has caught particular attention for the Harris camp in recent days: a social media post from pop star Charli XCX, who declared Harris to be “brat” — and in this case, that’s not a negative term.

Brat is also the name of the British singer’s latest album. More importantly, though, are the millions of Charli XCX’s followers who saw her post, as well as everyone else who saw it when it was shared — and, of course, the media coverage it generated.

The post also got noticed by the Harris campaign, which swiftly changed the look of its own X account to mimic the font and colour of the singer’s album.

TMU’s Mai said the speed with which the Harris team reacted to the brat post tells him how well the team is plugged in.

“That’s a good sign that her campaign is paying attention and learning to read the room,” said Mai.

‘A smart tactic’

Paolo Gerbaudo, a senior research fellow in social sciences at Complutense University in Madrid, concurs that the team behind Harris is on the right track with its effort to pick up on the memes of the moment and focus attention on the candidate.

“This is a smart tactic,” said Gerbaudo, who noted in an email that memes have, more broadly, become a useful tool for election campaigns. 

He said they can help generate enthusiasm for a candidate and create a community for voters to connect with.

But will heightened enthusiasm translate into votes at the ballot box? That’s another question.

Clifton van der Linden, an associate professor of political science at Ontario’s McMaster University, says there are a lot of unknowns about how memes can drive such a process.

“The technology and the culture employed in the development of memes is fast-changing and so our understanding of the implications for vote choice are still quite preliminary,” he said in an email.

If Harris and her team continue to make use of memes in their campaign, it will be important not to make any major missteps, to avoid drawing the wrong kind of attention from these digital tactics.

Gerbaudo said that means guarding against “the ever-present danger of ‘cringe’ — namely to look insincere, inauthentic, goofy or too pretentious in one’s use of digital culture.”

McMaster’s van der Linden said memes could be a way of reaching people who don’t pay close attention to politics. That means a meme-related fail will also get noticed.

“Kamala Harris is a well-known figure for those with a heavy news diet, but much less familiar among those with little interest in politics,” he said. 

“For that segment of the population, she has an opportunity to make something of a first impression and the production of meme-worthy content can aid or hinder her campaign depending on delivery.”

Painting a picture

Another meme with a Harris focus involves the VP’s avowed love of Venn diagrams — a satirical version of which was posted on her campaign’s feed on X this week.

Mai sees the overlapping circled diagrams as a peek into how Harris thinks. A prosecutor before entering politics, Harris would likely present an argument in a way that her audience would best understand the point being made — in the way that a Venn diagram would also.

“It can quickly convey what is the salient point in their argument,” he said.

Much like a meme. 

Catching younger voters’ attention

Prior to Biden’s departure from the ticket, young American voters were facing a choice between the 81-year-old sitting president or his 78-year-old Republican rival and presidential predecessor, Donald Trump.

If Harris — who is 59 — ends up being the name at the top of the ticket, she provides voters of all ages with a different choice than was offered in 2020 when Biden beat Trump.

Chris Mowrey, a Democratic social media influencer and member of the Gen Z population cohort — the eldest of which were born in the latter half of the ’90s — appears to be among those younger voters eager for a new name on the ballot.

“People are fired up, people are excited,” he told his more than 340,000 TikTok followers in a video that touted Harris’s fundraising levels since Biden dropped his re-election bid.

“Democrats are excited, I’m excited to vote for Kamala Harris.”

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii suggested that in Harris, these youngest voters had potentially found a candidate who isn’t a member of their generation but is still “in the pop culture mainstream.”

He told The Associated Press the Democrats “should be winning decisively among young people, and one of the impediments, frankly, was that they didn’t see anyone speaking for Democratic Party values who they found relatable.”