How news influencers talked about Trump and Harris during the 2024 election

About one-in-five Americans say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media, and around two-thirds of these Americans say that information helps them better understand current events. So what were audiences hearing from news influencers in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election?

Most news influencers were talking about both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and identical shares were more critical than supportive of each candidate, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of more than 150,000 posts from 500 news influencers published in summer and fall 2024.

But there were more posts about Trump than Harris, and those posts tended to be less critical of him than posts about Harris were of her. This is in part because right-leaning news influencers tended to post more often than left-leaning influencers.

How we did this

Pew Research Center has previously published a report on the news influencer environment and the role influencers play in Americans’ media diets. This analysis extends that work by examining news influencers’ attitudes toward Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in the summer and fall of the 2024 presidential campaign. For information about how news influencers were selected and how posts were collected and analyzed, refer to that report’s methodology.

We used a human-validated large language model to determine whether posts from the 500 news influencers from the original study were more supportive, were more critical or expressed no strong opinion (neutral) toward each candidate. In summer and fall 2024, we collected and analyzed all 155,827 posts these influencers published during five one-week periods: July 15-21, July 29-Aug. 4, Aug. 19-25, Oct. 28-Nov. 4, and Nov. 5-11.

The first week in the preelection period started just days after an assassination attempt on then-candidate Trump at a campaign rally. It included the Republican National Convention and then-President Joe Biden’s exit from the race. The third week included the Democratic National Convention, and the fourth week was the final week of campaigning before Election Day. The second week was selected because it did not have any comparable major events. Because of the time periods chosen, most of this analysis focuses on Trump and Harris, not Biden.

To validate the model, a set of trained coders reviewed 500 posts for whether the posts were supportive, were critical, or had no strong opinion about each candidate. We then used this information to validate the large language model. For more information on model instructions and validation, refer to Appendix A.

This is a Pew Research Center analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Find related reports online at https://www.pewresearch.org/pew-knight/.

How often did news influencers talk about Trump and Harris?

Nine-in-ten news influencers mentioned Trump and 86% mentioned Harris by name in at least one post during the weeks we studied in the summer and fall of 2024.

Yet twice as many posts mentioned Trump: 12% of all posts from news influencers during this period mentioned him, compared with 6% that mentioned Harris. (This pattern holds even when we exclude the first week in the study period, at the end of which Joe Biden ended his candidacy.)

Were news influencers more critical or supportive of the candidates?

We also looked at whether influencers were supportive, critical or neutral in their posts about the candidates. Influencers were considered “supportive” of a candidate if they had twice as many posts that were supportive of that candidate as posts that were critical of them (and vice versa to be considered “critical”).

About four-in-ten news influencers who mentioned Trump or Harris were more critical (42% for each) than supportive in their posts about the candidate. About a quarter were more supportive of each (28% for Trump and 24% for Harris).

Twice as many posts from news influencers about Harris were critical than were supportive (38% vs. 19%). In contrast, posts about Trump were more equally split (31% critical vs. 27% supportive).

How did left- and right-leaning news influencers discuss the candidates?

Partisanship is often a key part of the online news environment, and that extends to news influencers. A slightly larger share of news influencers analyzed in this study publicly express a right-leaning political orientation than a left-leaning one (27% vs. 21%). However, the largest share (48%) do not have a clear orientation.

Three-quarters of left-leaning news influencers were more supportive than critical of Harris, while 69% of right-leaning influencers were generally supportive of Trump. Both candidates drew heavy criticism from the opposing side: 87% of left-leaning news influencers were more critical than supportive of Trump, and 86% of right-leaning influencers were more critical than supportive of Harris.

But there was one other clear difference between left- and right-leaning news influencers: In general, right-leaning influencers tended to post more overall than left-leaning influencers. On average, right-leaning news influencers posted 183 times per week and mentioned Trump in 21 of those. Left-leaning news influencers posted 72 times per week on average and mentioned Harris in 12.

News influencers without a clear political orientation were not especially supportive of either candidate, but they were more likely to be critical of Trump than of Harris. Some 42% were critical of Trump, compared with 26% who were critical of Harris.

How did discussion differ across social media sites?

During the 2024 election season, the majority of posts by news influencers that mentioned either Trump or Harris were posted on X, formerly known as Twitter (79%). No other site produced more than 10% of posts by news influencers about either candidate.

Almost half of the posts on X that mentioned either candidate (48%) were posted by right-leaning news influencers, while only 28% came from left-leaning influencers.

The posts mentioning Harris on the site were more than twice as likely to be critical as supportive (38% vs. 17%). Posts mentioning Trump were more evenly split (28% critical vs. 27% supportive).

In contrast, TikTok had the highest share of posts mentioning either candidate from left-leaning news influencers – 45%, or nearly a mirror image of X. The posts mentioning Harris there were a roughly even mix of critical and supportive (31% vs. 35%), but the posts mentioning Trump were overwhelmingly more critical (54% critical vs. 19% supportive).

Did news influencers connected to news organizations discuss the candidates differently than those without news backgrounds?

The news influencers we analyzed in this study are mostly voices from outside of the newsroom: About three-quarters (77%) have no past or present affiliation with a news organization.

Before the election, news influencers with a connection to the news industry tended to be more critical than supportive of both candidates. But they were more likely to take a side when discussing Trump, while the largest share of influencers who mentioned Harris were generally neutral.

Meanwhile, news influencers without news industry connections were generally more critical than supportive of Harris. They were more evenly split in their posts that mentioned Trump, although a slightly larger share were critical than were supportive of him.

How did the discussion change after the election?

As polls closed and Americans learned the results, news influencers became less critical of both candidates and more supportive of the new president.

In the week of Nov. 5-11 (including Election Day and the next six days), 36% of news influencers who mentioned Harris were critical of her. That was a drop of 6 percentage points from the lead-up to the election. For Trump, 24% of those who mentioned him were critical after the election – a drop of 18 points.

Few (9%) were generally supportive of Harris after her loss, while the share who expressed support for Trump increased slightly, from 28% to 35%.

Left-leaning news influencers were far less likely after the election than before it to be supportive of Harris. While 75% were supportive in the weeks before the election, that dropped to 31% after the election. In contrast, right-leaning news influencers were about as supportive of Trump after the election (72%) as before (69%).

After the election, left- and right-leaning news influencers also became less critical of the opposing candidate. About six-in-ten left-leaning news influencers were generally critical of Trump after the election (61%), and an identical share of right-leaning influencers were generally critical of Harris. This was a more than 20-point drop from before the election.