Kamala Harris memes resonate with Gen Z voters

In an unofficial video doing the rounds on TikTok, a beaming Kamala Harris jives through the street with school children decked out in a glittery LGBT pride jacket while holding an umbrella. The clip then cuts to images of Donald Trump with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — all set to a diss track by rapper Kendrick Lamar.

In the four days since Harris became the lead candidate to replace Joe Biden as Democratic presidential nominee, the internet has exploded with memes of the US vice-president giggling, dancing and telling zany stories.

On platforms such as TikTok and X, Gen Z users are creating and sharing content featuring the vice-president, with added colours and electro beats, and spliced with other niche pop culture references.

Democratic strategists say the positive memes are part of a new, youth-led wave of enthusiasm for the party, which Biden, the oldest main party candidate in America’s history, failed to muster.

Although Biden won 59 per cent of voters aged 18-29 in 2020, a YouGov/Yahoo news poll taken before he withdrew from November’s election showed his support had dropped to 43 per cent. Trump’s rating in the same age group was 31 per cent.

“Young voters will be one of the arteries needed to make sure this campaign is alive and well,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist. “I certainly think we’re seeing energy, interest and participation that we had not seen before.”

Some of the most popular memes describe Harris as a “brat” — a reference to pop singer Charli XCX’s hit summer album that Gen Zers across the US and Europe are having to explain to their elders.

Far from being an insult, the singer said it refers to “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes”.

After Charli XCX’s post about Harris went viral, the vice-president’s campaign adopted Brat trappings, changing the colour and font of its X account to those of the singer’s album, an in-joke that has resonated with Gen Zers.

An analysis of Harris’s popularity on TikTok shows a recent leap in the use of #kamalaharris on the video platform, with mentions going up 455 per cent in the past 30 days.

Her campaign has been quick to lean into the online buzz, by making memes referencing XCX and other artists popular with Gen Z, like Chappell Roan.

Part of Harris’s appeal is her relative youth and historic status as the first main party Black and Asian-American female presidential candidate. But she has also tapped into Gen Z’s irreverent and obscure brand of online humour.

In another viral clip Harris shares an anecdote about her mother admonishing young people: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

“In an alternative universe we would see the coconut tree clip and think it’s sort of an incoherent phrase — like I don’t exactly know what she’s talking about, but because of that it’s funny,” said Haley Ellant, a 20-year-old junior at Bernard College.

“We don’t know if she can beat Trump but Gen Z is kind of rallying behind her, because there’s not much else we can do and her personality fits our humour.”

There is already some evidence that the online enthusiasm could translate into tangible support.

In the 48 hours after Biden withdrew from the race, Vote.org, a voter registration non-profit, said it registered 40,000 new voters, 83 per cent of whom were aged 18-34.

Gen Z political advocacy group Voters of Tomorrow said that it had seen more chapter sign-ups since Harris kicked off her campaign than in the previous two months combined, and its political action committee had its best fundraising day in its history on Sunday, raising nearly $125,000 from grassroots donors.

“That money rolling in the door is a big deal. It costs us about $4.77 to register one voter, so that’s a whole lot of new young voters that we can register,” said Marianna Pecora, Voters of Tomorrow’s director of communications.

Harris is also seen as being to Biden’s left on some crucial policy issues that appeal to young voters, such as climate change, student debt forgiveness and the war in Gaza, as well as having being the administration’s standard bearer on reproductive rights.

“I think she should obviously claim credit for the foundation Joe Biden laid,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a progressive advocacy group. “But she would do well to take it a step further and get to the root causes of some of these issues.”

But while Harris is enjoying a newfound popularity on social media platforms, engagement data shows that Trump’s numbers still dwarf those of the Democratic vice-president. 

Despite Trump posting only five TikToks to date, their viewership ranges from 3mn-164mn, far above the Democrat’s average of 330,000 views per post.

Similarly, on Instagram Harris posts more often across her three accounts but Trump receives more engagement.

The internet has also been flooded by racist posts about Harris. One, which harks back to birther conspiracies about Barack Obama, says that because her parents were immigrants, she is not a “natural born citizen” and ineligible to hold the office of president.

Another depicts a T-shirt with a sexually explicit edited photo of the Harris, reading “Cumala”.

There are also signs that Harris’s ‘memeability’ appeal to Gen Z may be off-putting to older voters.

“On the one hand they now have a candidate who can walk across the stage and complete a sentence,” said Terry Nelson, a Republican strategist. “On the other side she has a reputation for a word-salad speech pattern.

“Right now you have a rush of excitement about her candidacy — that may last for three months, it may not.”

Data visualisation by Peter Andringa and Sam Learner