Democrats Learned to Win the Social Feed After 2024's Digital Drubbing

When rumors about Taylor Swift's and Travis Kelce’s wedding on the Fourth of July weekend began swirling on social media, Abdul El-Sayed wanted in on the moment. At a holiday barbecue, the Michigan Democratic candidate—now the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate—pitched his staff the idea of doing a tribute, according to Ali Bibbo, digital director of El-Sayed’s campaign. His team swapped in new lyrics taking a jab at Mike Rogers, the Republican opponent, and the video garnered 6 million views. https://www.tiktok.com/@abdulelsayed/video/7658433560344268045 A millennial fluent in formats, El-Sayed pitched several of his own videos, including an ad blitz attacking Rogers for supporting Flock Cameras. Ahead of the seismic midterm elections this week, El-Sayed’s team set out to make him someone voters could picture having coffee with. They spoke to about 200 creators, most of them apolitical, who asked about weightlifting, coffee, and being a girl dad, Bibbo said. The team also posted explainer videos to social media in which El-Sayed broke down medical debt, tariffs, and ICE officers stationed outside data centers and hospitals. On TikTok and Instagram, the campaign released "Senate Island," a Love Island parody timed to the show's finale. His in-house digital team grew from three people in September 2025 to about nine by the general election. Its tools were organic social and video. “When you have a candidate who doesn't take corporate PAC money, who doesn't have these huge donations, you have to learn to communicate with people in non-traditional ways online, and you have to get really creative,” Bibbo said. “There’s so much bouncing around on the internet that winning this attention economy is a constant battle.” Welcome to the new era of the thirst-trappy, personality-driven young politico: the soft-eyed smile of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani; the progressive masculinity of El-Sayed; and the earnestness of James Talarico, the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas in 33 years. Anthony DiMieri, co-founder and executive producer of full-service political agency Melted Solids, who worked on Mamdani’s campaign, sees each candidate as an archetype. Political hopefuls now sell voters on a character as much as policies, with core personality traits that audiences can recognize, root for—and, increasingly, develop crushes on. “Zohran is like the accomplished son you’ve always wanted, Talarico is like the thoughtful youth pastor, and El-Sayed has this irreverent, fun dad personality,” DiMieri said. These new breeds of politician have found an audience who are spawning fan edits, memes, and unofficial accounts that make them look more like the machinery around a pop star than a political campaign. https://www.instagram.com/p/DfJxn3hMKu2/?psln=MXc0a3VxMWdrNHMxNQ%3D%3D https://www.instagram.com/p/DfU-ZR2Rcih/?cplk=NzY1cWYyNWZ2Z2Fk Democrats retook both chambers of Congress on Tuesday. El-Sayed beat Rogers and Talarico defeated Ken Paxton—to name a few. Mamdani’s social-first run for mayor last year gave the party a working model. Talarico, for example, built a “sizable online brand” before he declared for Senate, repeatedly going viral on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts with sermon-like videos and clips from the Texas statehouse floor, said Paulina Mangubat, head of content and creative for the Democratic National Committee. The formula is borrowed from creators: run candidates as a brand in an increasingly fragmented attention economy, according to five strategists who spoke to ADWEEK. In 2024, Democrats were on the other side of that ledger after Donald Trump’s victory following a tour of podcasts and creator channels aimed at young men. Democrats were faulted for being too cautious, scripted, and slow online. Since then, the party has courted creators, loosened its approvals, and let candidates get personal on camera, down to unbuttoned shirts and push ups. The DNC set a goal of building a 10,000-creator network by the end of November. "Traditionally with social, you have an antiquated approval process that goes very long. We condensed that into a 15-minute process," said Tim Hogan, senior advisor for messaging, mobilization, and strategy for the DNC. "People are consuming information in the moment, and that is a less sexy structural change that we made that helped the program." Built for the feed The biggest difference between the 2024 and 2026 election cycles is that Democrats have finally accepted that campaigns now compete in the attention economy, according to Lauren Kapp, who worked on digital strategy for Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign and runs Luminary Strategies. “It literally comes down to singular frames in videos to grab the audience's attention," she said, noting that winning those frames takes volume. Volume also demands a tolerance for risk the party’s establishment lacked in 2024. A bad tweet or a flat video now fades within days, Kapp added. “Algorithms are moving so quickly,” she said. The more a candidate shows up on podcasts, livestreams, and creator channels, the more raw material clippers and fan-cam editors have to work with. Those edits, heart-framed collages included, now trail El-Sayed and Mamdani across social media platforms. Personas can also flip fast. Younger voters branded El-Sayed “the mean Zohran” for much of the race, Kapp said, until a video about his life as a girl dad surfaced near Election night—and garnered 5.1 million views on Instagram as of publication. The unscripted test The content that traveled this year was largely unproduced, and Mamdani wrote the template, according to Kaya Yurieff, co-founder and co-CEO of creator-focused media company Scalable. https://twitter.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1899883329102414285?a=ydu52SZpN5UZZHVje40&s=20 Mamdani plunged into the freezing waters off Coney Island on New Year’s Day, a quintessential New York City city tradition, and in March 2025 joined dozens of protesters in Albany to confront Thomas Homan, Trump's border czar. “What's shifted [from 2024] is candidates are having to think more like creators themselves,” Yurieff said. “The reason that Mamdani’s campaign resonated so much is because he was a willing participant in his own social media.” https://twitter.com/AbdulElSayed/status/2111627277578731885?a=1LlpGKxCvNGGKbXdItE&s=20 El-Sayed's most shared moments came off the cuff, including a clip of him confronting hecklers who pressed him on whether he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood, and another of him calling out JD Vance for referring to him as a weasel. Talarico sat for an hour with skeptics on Jubilee, the YouTube debate series. “That’s a cultural sphere that hasn't been explored. [Candidates] are tapping in to find an audience that has largely been ignored,” said Debbie Saslaw, co-founder and executive producer of Melted Solids. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JE80I4FW_NY Talarico also went after Ken Paxton’s corruption in a register that came naturally to a man trained for the pulpit. “They’re all doing things differently depending on who they are—I think that may be the biggest point,” said Mangubat. “They’re also being fearless with taking on Republicans and not being as by-the-book as in previous cycles.” The 2028 playbook Every candidate will need a personal brand in 2028 with livestreaming as the next frontier, according to at least two strategists. "Specifically on platforms like YouTube and Twitch is where Democrats need to be," Kapp said. “That's where you can actually see people's personalities and be less filtered.” Creator-led outlets such as Piers Morgan’s independent YouTube operation ran their first Election Night livestreams this cycle, Yurieff noted. She expects sophisticated clipping operations to define the next presidential race the way podcasts defined the last one. A candidate’s persona will also have to hold up inside AI chatbots. Kapp said campaigns need to track how ChatGPT describes their candidate, since its answers draw heavily from Reddit. “It’s going to be critical for folks to have a team that’s focused on these chatbots and Reddit in particular,” she said.

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Democrats Learned to Win the Social Feed After 2024's Digital Drubbing

Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, and Zohran Mamdani built followings on character as much as policy.

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