If President Joe Biden follows through on his promise to enact a ban on TikTok because of its ties to the Chinese government, the 81-year-old president could rob his re-election campaign of a platform he and his fellow Democrats rely on to reach voters younger.
As a result, the Biden campaign received thousands of “likes” on Tuesday for a TikTok video criticizing Republican rival Donald Trump over cutting Social Security spending.
But the comments focused on another issue: the ban on the social network.
“Glad we saw this on TikTok,” said one. “How are you going to use this to campaign to ban yourself?” asked another.
House Republicans voted on Wednesday to force TikTok’s Chinese owner, the company ByteDance, to give up its 170 million user business in the US, or face a ban.
If the Senate approves the project, as requested by the White House, Biden has promised to sign it.
But the 2024 campaign appears to be nigh, and Democratic-leaning U.S. virtual political discourse has shifted to TikTok in recent years, political strategists say.
They note that X (formerly Twitter) has eased restrictions on harassment under owner Elon Musk, while Facebook has moved away from political content, while the short-video platform is favored by a new generation of politically engaged Americans.
TikTok users disproportionately belong to groups that reliably vote Democratic, which Biden needs to court. The Trump campaign does not have an official TikTok account.
Additionally, approximately 60% of TikTok’s regular U.S. news consumers are Democrats or Democrat-leaning, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study.
Nineteen percent of TikTok news consumers are Black and 30% are Hispanic, compared to about 14% and 19% of the general U.S. population, respectively.
About 44% of news consumers on TikTok are between the ages of 18 and 29.
