The TikTok Election Week 2 has Labour well ahead on post likes and shares
Posted on 7th June 2024
Detailed analysis of Week 2 of the election campaign on TikTok has revealed that Labour's activity is cutting through and resonating far more effectively than all the other parties – with the Conservatives in particular struggling to convince people to like or share their posts.
The analysis by social trend-spotting platform Shooglebox goes beyond adding up total views of posts and looks at the different levels of engagement the parties are getting on each of their TikToks.
This graph of all TikToks in the last week by the Tories, Labour, the Lib Dems, Reform and the Greens shows Labour not only achieving higher views across their posts but also more likely to get much higher levels of likes and shares as a percentage of post views.
The analysis appears to confirm what many are saying in TikTok comments – that Labour, and to an extent the Lib Dems, have successfully grasped the DNA of TikTok by understanding that it’s first and foremost an entertainment platform as opposed to a social networking platform.
TikTok does not allow paid political advertising on the platform so the only way to gain attention is to create content the algorithm thinks TikTokers will want to see for its entertainment value. And the number of followers you amass makes no difference – as evidenced by the relatively low number of views Reform are getting on their posts despite having 150,000 followers, just 20,000 fewer than Labour and 100,000 more than the Conservatives.
Since the start of the General Election campaign Labour's TikToks have been viewed 40 million times, compared to 14 million on the Conservatives' posts, 5 million for the Lib Dems, 3 million for Reform and 400,000 for the Greens. The difference between the parties is even more striking when it comes to the shareability of their TikToks. Labour's posts have been shared a total of 660,000 times – compared with Conservatives 74,000, Lib Dems 82,000 and Reform just 12,000 times during the election campaign so far.
Most-viewed TikToks of Week 2 in order
By combining political messages with simple, entertaining content that often taps in to current trends that TikTokers recognise and enjoy, Labour’s posts are being rewarded by the algorithm and appearing in more people’s For You Pages, partly through getting so many likes and shares – key measures to help the algorithm determine the most entertaining content. And when a TikToker notices and watches one of Labour's entertaining videos, they're now more likely to see more Labour posts, including those with more serious messages.
The Lib Dems are getting good levels of engagement on some of their TikTok-savvy posts too but not being rewarded with views to the same extent.
The Conservatives by contrast are managing to get a high number of views on some of their TikToks but they're not achieving high numbers of likes or shares as a percentage of views. On the Rest is Politics podcast this week, former Tory MP and leadership candidate Rory Stewart said one of the reasons was possibly because younger people were "too embarrassed" to be seen sharing the Conservative posts.
How are Labour doing it?
One of the most eye-catching examples of tapping into a current trend on TikTok was Labour's post photoshopping Rishi Sunak's head on to a wizard character with the message "You've been cursed by the Auramancer" and warning the viewer they'll lose 999,999 aura points if they don't share it. More than 180,000 TikTokers duly obliged and shared the post with friends, often saying things like "sorry bro – can't lose it", helping propel the post to more than 1.7 million views.
The post certainly puzzled a lot of people – "What is this? 😳😳😳", said one commenter – but it impressed those who recognised a recent TikTok trend that's evolved into a game in the past two weeks where people keep track of their "aura scores". It involves creating and sharing TikToks featuring fantasy characters telling the viewer how many aura points they've gained or lost. With shareability at the heart of the game, it's favoured by the algorithm and the Labour post is now one of the biggest TikToks on the trend.
Here's another example of the aura trend:
Labour's team is also moving at the speed of TikTok to spot and pick up on opportunities to have a bit of fun at the Conservatives' expense.
On Sunday June 2 the Conservatives posted a TikTok of Rishi Sunak offering to explain Labour's policy on the country's future ... only to reveal a blank flipchart page.
Within three hours Labour responded with a parody inserting Keir Starmer's key policy pledges on to the flipchart.
Labour's video got twice as many likes as the original and comments including: "Loool how no one in the Tory PR team didn’t see this coming is beyond me - Labour have done a 10/10 job in this campaign on Tiktok 😂😂", "Sunak absolutely walked into that one. Embarassing" and "Tories marketing team must be pulling their hair out 😂 this is better than m&s vs Aldi 😂😂 well played team labour".
Labour's most-viewed and most-liked TikTok in Week 2 of the election campaign uses the photo carousel post approach that's popular on the platform to show what Rishi Sunak might be searching for on Google. It builds on some of the strands from Labour's previous memes, with searches like "How to get TikToks making fun of me taken down", "How to make a whole country forget 14 years in four weeks", and even "Why do people keep making me stand in front of flip charts?" It's had more than two million views and 250,000 likes.
Who's not getting it right?
So far the Greens have been really struggling to get views on their TikToks and some of their own supporters are telling them to look at what Labour and the Lib Dems are doing in tapping in to the spirit of TikTok.
The top comment on this Green Party video is: "Guys, please hire a Gen Z social media manager just for the next few weeks. Look at how much engagement the red and blues are getting on TikTok 😅"
Others agreed:
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"Came here to say this. Or engage by dueting with them!"
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"Have you seen the LibDem’s socials page? It’s hilarious. A little dated meme wise but still much better than this."
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"Just had a look and I 100% agree. The oranges aren’t as provocative as the red and blues but they’re still driving traffic to their page."
The weaponisation of TikTok comments
Analysing the sentiment in comments on the parties' TikToks is much more difficult as many of the threads are overrun by comments that are clearly from fake accounts set up to push opposing messages or sow confusion. In the first week of the election "Vote Reform" comments were all over the TikToks posted by Labour and the Tories – often posted by the same accounts, many of them following each other. TikTok says it detects and removes millions of fake accounts every month but it's very much a game of whack-a-mole.
One of the joys of TikTok is reading the comment threads, which are often as entertaining as the posts themselves and where there's a real sense of community around the topic or trend. That's hard for the political parties to achieve when it appears there's an army of agitators waiting to weaponise the comment threads as soon as one of them posts. Detailed analysis of comments show, however, that genuine TikTokers tend to see through this and identify the fakes, who often have no bio, no visible posts and giveaway account names – "Here come the bots!" is a common comment and "Get ready for the Reform UK Russian bot accounts with union jacks."
Buzz – a service from Shooglebox – helps major UK brands spot, understand and quickly respond to emerging TikTok trends, and tap into what their customers are seeing, saying and doing on social media. In June 2024 we’re tracking the role TikTok is playing for the first time in a General Election campaign.
