Kamala Harris grabs the spotlight from Donald Trump

It's been a busy week in politics, as Joe Biden announced he would not run for reelection, and would not accept his party's nomination for the 2024 election. 

This has thrust his Vice President Kamala Harris — now the presumptive nominee 72 hours after the initial announcement — to the front and center of the discourse, as she now plans to take on Donald Trump for the presidency.

And so far, at least, she's become the protagonist in the wake of the news.

From relatively low public interest at the tail end of last week, Harris has come to the forefront of the public's attention since Sunday, consistently getting more interest than Trump, though she's not yet at the highs of Trump's RNC bounce. 

The surge was also true of media interest, where Harris went from being featured in around 2,000 articles per day to consistently appearing as the focus of closer to 20,000.

As we noted earlier this week, there have now been more articles written about Harris in the last three days than in the rest of 2024 combined.

This will, of course, bring greater scrutiny to her campaign, but also greater visibility, as perhaps evidenced by the surge in grassroots donations to her campaign.

It remains to be seen how the race settles after this sudden surge in interest, but for now at least, the Democratic nominee has the world's attention.

The top publishers on social media

In the fractured social media environment of 2024, it’s impossible for publishers to rely on web traffic alone, which is why we've done an exhaustive analysis to see which publishers and stories are getting the most engagement across different platforms. 

This report spans web, Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, looking at accounts from mainstream news and beyond.

Here are a few takeaways from the report:

• An ecosystem of news exists on Instagram now, with mainstream publishers able to reach a broader audience without a paywall, to feel-good content and non-traditional publishers driving huge amounts of engagement on the platform. 
• The Daily Mail continues to dominate TikTok with its short-from video reporting, but cable news outlets (in the US and UK) have attracted their own audiences and achieved success this year by repackaging their content for vertical video.
• News publishers are seeing success on LinkedIn by approaching content differently, from highlighting niche work topics to simply posting motivational quotes.

To read more about what's working on each platform and see the top posts, you can download the report here.

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