Battle of the Subreddits r/KamalaHarris vs. r/Trump

Election Day is upon the folks in America!

Update November 4th, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris subreddit is now at 80,000 up from a starting point of 11,000 3 months ago which is a little over 7x in 3 months. The r/Trump subreddit is at 127,000 from a starting point of 113,000 3 months ago which is a gain of 14k in the same time period.... what does it say about the election? Nothing...what does it say about what Kamala and her team have had to do in the last 3 months....a lot... she drove growth in her startup with a ton of support given the head start Trump had... she wins the growth award... lets see how she does in Americas 60th Presidential election.

Update September 3rd, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris subreddit now is at 58,000 up 12,000 in the last 2 weeks and the r/Trump subreddit is up 1,000 in the same period. Kamala has a long way to go to catchup but has the wind in her sails.

Update: August 19, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris subreddit is now at 46,000 up 5k in the last 7 days the r/Trump subreddit at 117,000 up 1k in the same period

The Democratic National Convention starts in Chicago today and while the momentum has slowed it still appears to be with VP Kamala Harris at this point but Trump's subreddit is still growing. The question is - is this growth an indicator is it reflective of the direction of voting? Is it too late for VP Kamala Harris to catchup? The election is November 5th... what can happen in the next 2 months? Lots!! watch this space

Update: August 12th, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris subreddit is now at 41,000 up 3k in the last 4 days the r/Trump subreddit at 116,000 up 1k in the same period.

Update: August 8th, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris subreddit is now at 38,000 up 10k in the last 6 days the r/Trump is holding at 115,000 in the same period. Momentum is with Harris who recently announced her VP pick Tim Walz who has been well received

Update: August 2nd, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris is now at 28,000 members up 9k in the last 6 days r/Trump is up 1000 in the same period still far ahead at 115,000 but the momentum is with Harris

Update: July 27, 2024 - r/KamalaHarris is now at 19,000k members up 3000 in the last 48 hours r/ Trump is steady at 114,000k has not grown in last 48 hours

Update: July 25, 2024 - r/ KamalaHarris is now at 16,000 members up 2000 in the last 24 hours. Trump is up 1000 to 114k

July 23rd, 2024 - The r/KamalaHarris subreddit grew by 3000 members in the last 24 hours. I was writing this article a day ago when the subreddit had 11,000 members and this morning its grown to 14,000 which is still very little but I wanted to get a sense of the pulse of Reddit and I got my answer. As you know Channalyst is spending this season taking a deep dive into Reddit to understand it from a marketers perspective and from all angles. Reddit used to be called “The front page of the Internet”… having lived through the portal wars when I was at MSN they were right to change it but they are definitely a place where you can look for signals of what is happening. This gave me a crude way of sensing the velocity.

As a Canadian, the US politics is kinda like living next door to that smiling couple who sometimes have the best BBQ’s and then every 4 years they have the worst fights. And boy did the fight take a turn for “interesting” with Joe Biden out and Kamala Harris in. I checked to see if there were any subreddits related to Kamala and there are a few but to date with very low membership counts 11,000 (9/23/2024) vs. Trump who has a few communities with the biggest having 113,000 members.

Kamala

I did get curious to see what the growth would be like. I took the screen shot around 9am EST on 7/23 and the subreddit had 11,000 yesterday and now 14,000 members... I’ll be tracking the growth weekly to see how projections fare against the polls since the polls in the last few cycles have been wrong…. Could we use Reddit’s interest graph as a proxy to see who might win the US Presidency? The interest graph isn't a real thing I’m essentially going to cobble together some data which for you marketers should just give you a sense of what is possible on the platform.

Reddits search is getting better making it easier to find subreddits related to your search.

#'s July 23rd, 2024 at 9am

#'s July 24th, 2024 9:15am

So it looks like there has been some growth 24 hours later which is a pulse on the interest. While Trumps numbers are much higher but did not change over the 24 hours. So essentially given the news cycle Reddit is reflecting the pulse of interest. In a similar what google trends does except what I think is great about Reddit is that you not only get the signal on interest but you are able to target those interests and see the relevant conversations. Think about product launches or feature and flavor launches. New movies, new shows and the lead up to them. You can get a sense of the anticipation and interest both organically and as a reaction to marketing.

Trump

#’s July 23rd, 2024

#’s July 24th, 9:20am

If you’re looking for content ideas or to discover subreddits related to one you like you can do that. Here you can see all the subreddits related to “Trump” and members who are interested in this subreddit are likely also interested in these other ones

Subreddits related to the Trump subreddit

Subreddits related to Kamala Harris

Kamala has a much smaller set of related subreddits but its interesting nonetheless. So if you were developing tech for marketers you can very easily find the subreddits they belong to and the related subreddits with this tool .

What is important to note is that because you are dealing with multidimensional human beings their interest vary wildly and so it’s not like Search keyword targeting in that you are not necessarily looking for related keywords …. rather you start with an interest and then look for patterns on what else a person who is a member of a r/politics subreddit might be interested in. You can see in the example below a marketer might do well to also create content related to “anti work” ideas or “work reform” since people interested in politics are also in those subreddits. A Creative Director might take an approach that involves slapstick or memes or visualized data because there appears to be some interest with people also members of meme related subreddits.

Reddit is also a great place to find collections of visual data related to different topics. Like the r/USelectionmaps where you can find great visualizations like these below:

Political Advertising on Reddit

For those political marketers who might be wondering what the advertising policy is on Reddit there is a subreddit for that r/RedditPoliticalAds That is described in their own words as follows:

Reddit Political Ads Transparency Community

This is a community for providing transparency on political ads on Reddit. This is an admin-sponsored community.

On this Subreddit they post all the political advertisers and Ads classified as political… for example it looks like Patagonia has been running Ads classified as tied to a political issue which is so “on brand”.

Reddit is an interesting place. So I’ll be tracking to see if there are any data points that hint to changes in tide of the US Election. Bookmark this page as I’ll update the subreddit

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