Photo by Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images
- A third-party voter drive pays TikTok influencers to encourage users to register to vote in the US.
- The campaign, just two months old, recently crossed 21,000 signups.
- Almost all the voters are aged under 25, and 60% are women.
- Bigtent Creative has spent $375,000 signing up voters.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
A drive to register voters for the upcoming US presidential election through TikTok has added 20,000 Americans to the electoral rolls.
Bigtent Creative, an organization designed to engage with prospective voters digitally, has spent $375,000 on overheads and payments to creators to promote TikTokVoters.com, which has been registering TikTok users to vote over the last two months. It’s also paid for Snapchat filters, though the bulk of the campaign is being done through TikTok.
“Bigtent Creative was started with the sole purpose of investing in, reaching, and mobilizing young potential voters that others aren’t reaching,” Ysiad Ferreiras, CEO of Bigtent, told Business Insider.
“We are doing the most obvious thing — which is reaching people where they’re at, using the communication channel that they’re using, with messaging that resonates, around an urgent action that’s important,” said Ferreiras. “If any of those above weren’t true, the whole thing wouldn’t work.”
Among the creators Bigtent paid to encourage TikTok users to vote was Jackie Gansky, a TikToker originally from Philadelphia, PA, with 1.9 million followers on the app.
"I wanted to get involved with the BigTent campaign because I see how influential creators can be to such an important demographic of voters, and I knew this campaign would be instrumental in doing my part to encourage young people to share their voice during such an important time," she told Business Insider.
Her video promoting the voter registration website was seen more than 55,000 times.
While that's a good number, it's still less than the average video she posts, which is seen 1.5 million times, according to data reviewed by Business Insider.
The voter recruitment drive has ensured people are eligible to vote across the country, including in 19 key battleground states.
More than 4,000 alone have been added to electoral rolls in Texas — far and away the state with the most signups.
As you'd expect from a digital voting drive focused on TikTok, 85.9% of the voters Bigtent has registered are under 25 years old, and over 60% are women. Roughly three in 10 of Gansky's audience are under the age of 25, while 78% are women.
Following prior research that TikTok users may lean more Republican than expected, just 30% of the voters Bigtent has registered have indicated a party preference.
TikTok unveiled an in-app guide to the election, including the ability to register to vote from within the app, in late September. It also provided information about candidates standing in seats nearest the user.
"Now more than ever TikTok and social media is crucial for encouraging others to share their voice and be heard," said Gansky. "We can't organize in person and have to meet people online, so TikTok and social media platforms are where these important conversations are happening."