The five key election topics shaping public interest
In the run-up to elections, Americans are hit with a firehose of content about the issues at stake. In our latest report, we aim to cut through some of the noise in that coverage and highlight what's actually breaking through from the reporting and social posts.
To do that, we’ve examined five key issues that are gaining the most traction online and might influence the public’s vote — the economy, immigration, abortion, health care, and foreign policy.
To put into perspective just how important these topics are to the American people, our research showed that there were 25 million engagements with articles written about the economy this year, and 13 million engagements with ones about abortion.? But that's just web coverage. We dive into much more in the report, including: ?
You can read the full report here.
The Instagram election era?
There are so many ways you could look at an election. The media is often the leader in deciding what the public mood is, setting a news agenda and probing the candidates on their stances. Or you could look at the polls — a moment in time snapshot of how a select group feels. Both of these serve their purpose, and make for interesting conversations in their own right.
But what we’re interested in is the content that actually impacts people, the content they’re compelled to react to, to share, to comment on.
We took a lot away from this research, which you can read about in full on the blog, but perhaps the biggest talking point was the level of success that Donald Trump has seen on Instagram.?
If 2012 was the first social media election, and 2016 the focus was on Twitter (now X, of course) then 2024 might be the first Instagram election. Trump has seen huge engagement with his posts on the platform, garnering more than 53 million engagements in total this year.
His WWE-esque entrance to speak at the convention?was his top post of the election cycle, generating more than 2 million engagements, and he has several more posts that topped a million.These have included a post about uniting America?(1.7M), a video at a wreath ceremony?(1.4M), ?and the now infamous?AI cat photo (1M).
Of course, it’s possible we’re missing the wood for the trees here when the biggest post about either candidate isn’t from the candidates themselves or any news organization. Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris on debate night is by far the biggest individual post of this election cycle on any platform, with more than 11 million engagements (and that’s with the comments turned off!)
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If we’re talking about the influence of Instagram, it would be foolish not to reference Swift’s impact there in actively engaging voters with an affirmative endorsement, as well as directing people to make sure they were registered to vote.
Head over to our blog to read analysis beyond Instagram, including a look at web coverage for the candidates, as well as the Harris campaign's use of TikTok to reach young voters.
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