Kamala Harris’ recent emphasis on the harm she believes a second Donald Trump presidency could do to American democracy is likely to resonate with swing voters, according to a study published by a social media monitoring company.
An analysis of posts published between October 10 and 20 by Impact Social found that “democracy” was posters’ single biggest concern, ahead of the economy, crime and abortion. It also said 53 percent of social media posts referencing Harris and democracy framed the current vice president in a negative light, versus 47 percent that portrayed her positively.
By contrast, 88 percent of posts referencing Trump and democracy were negative toward the Republican presidential nominee.
Over the past week, Harris has increasingly focused on what she perceives to be Trump’s authoritarianism. On Tuesday, she told radio host Charlamagne tha God that his political vision could be described as fascism.
Newsweek contacted representatives of the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment on Wednesday via email outside of regular office hours.
On Monday, Harris’ campaign released a video montage of Trump telling his supporters that America has a major problem with “the enemy from within” and that the military may have to be deployed to deal with this. This week also saw the publication of an article by The Atlantic that said during his presidency Trump once said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” though this was dismissed as “absolutely false” by his team.
Impact Social says it uses algorithms to keep track of swing voter sentiment on social media, based on a database of 40,000 social media users it identified as swing voters that was first created in 2016.
The analysis found “democracy” was the biggest swing voter concern according to social media on nine of the 11 days studied, with the subject being beaten only by the economy on October 11 and very narrowly by crime on October 16. Among the sample, democracy received more than 1,000 social media mentions by swing voters on all 11 days, except for October 13 to 15 inclusive, when it was just under.
KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP/GETTY
Examples of social media comments flagged by Impact Social included one user who said, “The Republican rationalization and reinvention of January 6 is shameful,” and another who said: “We got our ballots and will early vote next week. I pray we save our democracy.”
On January 6, 2021, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a bid to prevent Joe Biden‘s election victory from being certified, with one person shot dead by police and dozens of officers injured in the ensuing violence. Trump is continuing to insist the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, though this has been repeatedly rejected in court and by independent election experts.
In an article published on Sunday, The New York Times said Harris has moved away from her initially “joyful” presidential campaign and is instead “moving aggressively to make sure voters in the battlegrounds remember precisely why they rejected Donald Trump four years ago.”
The newspaper added: “Gone is the euphoria of her joyful first weeks as the Democratic presidential nominee. She is no longer trying simply to diminish the former president. Now, he looms large. Literally.”
Mark Shanahan, an expert in U.S. politics who teaches at the U.K.’s University of Surrey, said what he called Trump’s “authoritarian direction” could frighten swing voters.
“If a second Trump term looks set to be a retributive period and strike a new authoritarian direction for the republic, then it’s bound to scare many and become the talking point for almost everybody,” he told Newsweek.
“The economy, immigration and women’s reproductive rights are what will drive people to the polls, but an autocratic threat to a 248-year-old democracy will define which way they finally vote,” Shanahan said.
For a copy of Impact Social’s full report, click here.
