The Campaigns of 2024: Streaming, AI, and Emotional Politics
This election marked the tipping point for digital dominance in U.S. politics.
This is part two of my three-part series recapping what happened in this historic year of elections. You can find part one on global elections here.
Image courtesy of ChatGPT, who helped me refine how I presented some of the ideas in this newsletter.
Twenty years ago, my first official election cycle was in Washington. I worked at the Republican National Committee, and George W. Bush had just won a second term after a very contentious and close race four years earlier. At the time, any work online was still called e-campaigning. The iPhone didn’t exist. Facebook wasn’t even a year old. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and many other platforms didn’t exist. Bloggers had just taken down a network news anchor for using falsified documents, and podcasts had just been created that year.
If I were to take a time machine back to my 24-year-old self, who wasn’t sure if this online world would be something I could make a career of, that not only could you make a career out of it but that these tools would become core to campaigns’ strategies, it would be a dream come true. In many ways, it is a dream come true.
Not everyone sees the internet as a net positive for democracy, and I get why. But I often remind myself: we’re only at half-time in this game. My own career—from the RNC in 2004 to working with global election teams at Facebook—has taught me how dynamic and unpredictable the intersection of technology and politics can be. While we’ve seen undeniable downsides, the potential for positive impact keeps me optimistic.
But today, I want to focus on how I saw tech used in the United States this cycle. Some of this will overlap with next week’s theme about what changed politically for the tech industry, but most of this will look at not only how the campaigns, media, influencers, and others utilized technology to reach voters but also how the voters used technology to engage with politics.
Here’s my top line: This cycle cemented a digital-first approach for campaigns to reach voters, whereas in other cycles, digital was important but still secondary to broadcast and traditional media.
This is why:
The cord cutters hit a tipping point. In August 2023, Nielsen reported that linear TV viewing dropped below 50 percent for the first time, and streaming was at an all-time high. Overall, the information environment was more fragmented than ever before. At the Harvard campaign managers event, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio discussed how they’ve been seeing more and more viewers go to streaming and how they are usually in the persuadable universe.
Why it’s notable: To reach voters where they were, campaigns needed to spend less time on mainstream media and more time on podcasts and other platforms where people were paying attention.
Digital Burnout Meets Emotional Engagement. People are burnt out and want to control when and how they consume news—a trend that dovetails with emotional regulation. Meta wasn’t entirely wrong about people wanting less politics in their feeds, but it’s more nuanced than that. As the Google/Gemic research shows, voters intentionally engage with heavy topics and want to choose the time and platform for doing so. Campaigns that respect this balance—mixing emotional resonance with digestible policy—did better. Trump’s long-form discussion on Joe Rogan’s podcast exemplifies this shift: voters tuned in because it felt authentic, not scripted.
Why it’s notable: Campaigns needed to mix up the types of shows. They went on to show more of who they were as people with policies sprinkled in rather than going heavy on talking points. That’s why Donald Trump spent three hours with Joe Rogan.
People prioritize regulating their feelings over logic. My friend Kate Klonick and her colleague have an excellent new paper in Science that proves the adage, “You can’t bring facts to a feelings fight.” The Google/Gemic paper says the same. During this election, people rejected being told how they should feel about things like the economy when their lived experiences were very different. This was another theme in the Harvard conversation with the campaign managers. While people may care about progressive issues, those didn’t trump the economy as to how many voted. Those who do well online evoke feelings and emotions but also know where voters want to engage with them versus where they do not.
Why it's notable: This will be an ongoing trend for at least the following year. People want to cocoon, they want escapism, they want to feel seen, and they want to stay up with the trends but not have to spend a lot of time doing so. This is where AI is going to come in, and the winners of 2026 and 2028 will be those who figure out this balance.
Trust in media and many institutions is low. This has been covered extensively, so I won’t go deeply into it, but I have to mention it as it is a significant factor in why people seek alternatives.
Why notable: This is another reason campaigns had to find other outlets/influencers to reach voters.
Voters signaled online what they cared about. I love this insight from Biden and Harris’ digital lead and Deputy Campaign Manager, Rob Flaherty, who talks about how they noticed Project 2025 getting mentioned in the comments on TikTok in February and, while they were skeptical, started doing content on it as well and saw it take off. It's the same with jumping on the coconut, brat, midwest princess, and many other online trends of the year.
Why it’s notable: The Right has long been better at taking something from the depths of the Internet and moving it into its news ecosystem. The Left did a good job of jumping on online trends this cycle, too. The moral of the story is that it is less about creating trends and more about identifying them early and capitalizing on them in a way that is authentic to the trend and the campaign.
Here are some key moments from the race that embody these themes.
Key Moments in 2023
May 24: DeSantis launches his presidential bid on X with Elon Musk. This is the first time a tech CEO has participated in a launch in this way, and it was an early signal of the outsized role Musk would play in this election.
July 5: Threads launches and says it won’t prioritize politics and news. Journalists and many orgs erupt in outrage. It is a theme that follows the company throughout the election but matches what others found about people wanting to be more intentional when they consume information on heavier topics.
August 23: Rumble - a right-leaning video platform - is the official streamer of the first GOP Presidential Primary debate, and the Ruthless podcast records live on-site with interviews from many of the candidates and their representatives.
Key Moments in 2024
While the first half of 2024 started slow, the latter half gained momentum, with digital platforms driving sentiment shifts. Here are a few highlights from Hootsuite’s analysis:
July 13: Attempted assassination of Donald Trump sparks online uproar, dominating social platforms for weeks.
August 2: Kamala Harris announced as the Democratic nominee—a milestone covered extensively online before mainstream outlets caught up.
August 12: Trump and Elon Musk host a virtual chat on X, an unprecedented blend of politics and tech.
Each of these pivotal moments was announced or amplified online first, solidifying the dominance of digital platforms.
A few other things:
The end of the Commission on Presidential Debates. The entire traditional debate schedule was completely upended in 2024, with Biden and Trump debating far earlier than ever before and Harris and Trump only having one debate. All run by news organizations versus the commission. Will Joe Rogan host a debate in 2027/2028? I wouldn’t rule it out.
Coordination between researchers and tech companies declined, but the Federal government was more vocal about foreign interference. The Supreme Court played a role in this election unlike any other. Many of them got kicked back to lower courts, but what it did have the effect of doing - in addition to pressure from Rep. Jim Jordan - was shut down things like the Stanford Internet Observatory. So, while we saw less coordination there, we did see the ODNI and others being much more forthright with what they saw online, which was hugely helpful.
AI: A Quiet Yet Transformative Role. While AI didn’t dominate the 2024 campaign as some predicted, its quiet influence set the stage for future elections. From state legislation around AI in politics to the Munich Accord on responsible AI, the groundwork is being laid. In practice, AI-enhanced campaign efficiency this cycle: summarizing communication strategies, personalizing outreach, and analyzing voter data. By 2026 and 2028, AI will likely play a pivotal role in synthesizing content, enabling campaigns to deliver hyper-targeted messaging while respecting voters’ desire for control.
We are in the middle of a massive realignment in the way campaigns are run in the United States and worldwide. Technology and online platforms continue to grow their role and influence in how voters get news and information, and campaigns are following. While we didn’t see AI being central to campaigns, last week, I did a panel at the 2024 IDU Forum (The IDU is an organization of center-right electeds and parties from around the world) about using AI in campaigns. The Leadership Institute and other vendors discussed using AI to summarize communications, personalize messages to voters, and analyze data. That will only grow.
Our information environment will also only continue to change. This past weekend, while searching on TikTok for videos of Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vancouver, I got an AI summary of the videos about that topic for the first time with the option to watch those. That is the beginning of how AI will help us synthesize a lot of content at once. AI’s continued impact on our information environment, Google/Gemic’s research about how people approach consuming online content, and Neil Howe’s book “The Fourth Turning is Here,” which talks about how chaotic things will be for the next eight to ten years are my current Roman empires (a fun online theme from 2023 about how most men think about the Roman empire at least once a day).
Conclusion: The Digital Campaign Future
The 2024 election didn’t mark the start of the digital-first era but cemented it as the new standard. Campaigns must now navigate a fragmented media landscape, leverage the emotional resonance of their messaging, and meet voters where they are—online, on their terms.
As we look to 2026 and beyond, campaigns that innovate within these trends while addressing emerging technologies like AI will shape the future of political engagement. The question isn’t whether to go digital—it’s how to do so effectively while earning voters’ trust in an age of growing skepticism.
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