Oct 14, 2026 · 51 min
Campaigns still buy TV while voters live online
How to Run a Political Campaign in the TikTok Era (And How Not To)
The next generation of political campaigns must reconcile fragmented digital attention with television’s entrenched money, measurement, and professional incentives.
- 1Digital media works best as a campaign’s central strategy, not a department producing isolated content.
- 2Creators and algorithmic platforms can expand reach, but frequency cannot substitute for a coherent identity or meaningful message.
- 3Television persists because campaigns understand its measurement and incentives, even when digital outreach may better match voter behavior.
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Flaherty’s analysis of the Harris campaign separates broad digital reach from the harder task of explaining why Harris was running and how she differed from Biden.
The brief
Rob Flaherty argues that campaigns still treat digital media as a department rather than their organizing strategy, even as voters encounter politics across TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, and feeds.
Authentic internet content requires candidates to play to their own strengths, while creators should be treated as trusted partners—not ordinary paid-media placements.
Television survives through familiar measurement, industry habits, and financial incentives; consultants and media buyers can profit from spending that campaigns already know how to defend.
Flaherty’s account of the Harris campaign turns on message coherence: it reached important voters, but never consistently explained why Harris was running or how she differed from Biden.
The lesson for 2028 is not to chase every available audience; frequency and viral reach matter only when a candidate has a believable identity and something meaningful to say.