Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon was dwarfed by her Democratic primary opponent’s $16 million war chest, but she had something he didn’t: hundreds of thousands of followers across her social media platforms.
In Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, Nixon had raised under $1 million and spent just $50,000 on digital ads. Nevertheless, Nixon was victorious over retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who had vastly more financial resources.
Nixon used her social media following to garner grassroots support in the Sunshine State, but her success offered the latest example of an increasingly important question in political campaigns: How much is social media following worth at the ballot box?
As social media has exploded over the past two decades, candidates now have access to a relatively inexpensive way to build name recognition and mobilize supporters, but political research and past elections show that a large digital audience does not necessarily translate into an electoral one.
Using social media as a campaign tool was pioneered by Howard Dean in 2004 when he built his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on the internet through blogs and websites, which he used to build enormous enthusiasm and raise money outside traditional political structures. Dean’s campaign ultimately fell short because he wasn’t able to bring that online audience to the polls.
Former President Barack Obama took Dean’s strategy further in 2008, marrying digital outreach with fundraising, volunteer recruitment, and field organizing.
Nearly 20 years later, social media has become the testing ground for strategy, giving candidates a way to turn online attention into campaign support, and potentially, votes.
Mamdani becomes today’s model
When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his mayoral bid as a nobody state legislator, he had just 14,000 followers on his personal Instagram account. By the time voters went to the primary polls in June, he had reached 1 million followers on the platform as videos promoting his affordability-focused agenda routinely drew hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of views.
But his victory in the Democratic mayoral primary election over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo offered one of the clearest examples of a candidate turning social media attention into electoral momentum.
Mamdani’s online strategy went beyond accumulating followers. His campaign packaged his policy proposals of a rent freeze, free buses, and city-owned grocery stores into short videos designed for social media, while using the platforms to introduce Mamdani to voters and reinforce a consistent message centered on New York’s cost of living.
Marina Orcutt, a co-founder of Democratic digital strategy company Watershed Strategy, told the GW Hatchet in April that Mamdani’s social media strategy worked because he was able to develop a recognizable voice that felt organic to the audience. She explained that potential voters are adept at pointing out inauthenticity online, adding that consistency can be a key factor in a campaign’s digital success.
“Voters, constituents, and donors can root out our inauthentic campaign behavior pretty quickly,” Orcutt said.
Mamdani also used influencers in an organic way, Orcutt said, adding that when celebrities or influencers were used, it was in a way that felt authentic.
In an ad released three days before the general election, Mamdani visited six nightclubs in one night. While on the street, he was recorded in conversation with comedians Mary Beth Barone and Stavros Halkias. The clip didn’t feel staged by a director in a studio, but more like the viewer stopped by to join the discussion.
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Brookings Institution senior fellow E.J. Dionne Jr. described Mamdani’s campaign operation as “exceptional mastery” of social media video because it demonstrated the payoff at the ballot box.
Dionne notes that another factor in Mamdani’s success has more to do with his image. Mamdani “presented as a happy and hopeful warrior,” which his ads plastered across social media. The mayor’s youth against Cuomo’s aged appearance offered a new image for voters to stick in their minds, Dionne explains, a similar asset deployed by former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
But the value of Mamdani’s social media presence extended beyond the number of people watching his videos. As his profile grew, so did the number of supporters willing to take his campaign offline.
Mamdani’s volunteer operation grew exponentially between his campaign launch and the primary, according to the Associated Press, with organizers reporting that many of the young New Yorkers who joined had never previously considered canvassing for a political campaign.
That progression tracks with broader research into the relationship between social media and political participation.
Pew Research Center has found that people who follow political figures on social media are more likely than those who do not to volunteer for campaigns, attend political events, and encourage others to support a candidate at the polls.
Mamdani’s digital strategy, then, did not replace the traditional work of turning out voters. It helped feed it. His videos built an audience around a recognizable candidate and message, while the campaign converted some of that attention into volunteers who could carry the message beyond social media and directly to voters.
The model hits the midterm elections
Mamdani’s success offered a blueprint for candidates hoping to turn an active social media presence into something more valuable at the ballot box. The 2026 primary elections have offered early tests of whether that strategy can translate beyond New York City.
In Florida, Nixon was beaten on the fundraising front and had less name recognition than Vindman, who became known nationally for his testimony during President Donald Trump‘s first impeachment.
Nixon leaned on grassroots organizing and social media outreach to build support for a campaign heavily focused on affordability and other economic issues. She ultimately defeated Vindman by more than 12 points, winning roughly 56% of the vote.
During her primary campaign, Nixon’s videos on social media, like Mamdani’s, weren’t polished productions.
One video, with almost 30,000 views, is just Nixon dancing with her constituents to a rap song. Although it may not discuss policy or anything about her campaign, that video brings people to her page, which is home to a trove of other videos. Nixon talks about her plans for Florida in casual vlog-style videos often filmed in her car or home, or through clips of her media appearances.
Nixon may not have been a social media sensation, but she paired her online presence with good old-fashioned organizing.
While her videos may only bring together a dozen people, as the New York Times reported of an event in Broward County, her campaign director Rachel Gilmer told the outlet that it is one of many small groups across Florida.
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In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed built a sizable digital following during his Democratic Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). El Sayed’s Instagram audience grew from about 65,000 followers at the beginning of the year to more than 350,000 by the eve of the primary as his campaign produced more content. Stevens’s following remained comparatively flat even as her campaign increased its own posting in the final weeks of the race.
Like Mamdani, however, el Sayed paired his online presence with a substantial ground operation. His campaign held more than 500 events across 110 Michigan cities and assembled roughly 12,000 volunteers before he narrowly defeated Stevens for the Democratic nomination. He did so despite more than $60 million in outside spending during the contest, much of it aimed at defeating him.
Their victories do not establish social media as a substitute for money, organizing, or other fundamentals of campaigning. Instead, they point to the role digital platforms can play in building the infrastructure behind a campaign — turning viewers into followers, followers into donors or volunteers, and potentially, those supporters into voters.
But that conversion is far from guaranteed.
When followers flop
The same primary season has also demonstrated the limits of translating an online following into votes.
Elijah Manley, a 27-year-old progressive organizer and substitute teacher, built a national profile and substantial online following during his challenge to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) in Florida. His campaign attracted support from progressive outside groups and figures from outside the district as he sought to unseat the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman in a newly drawn, majority-black district.
While Manley’s personal accounts had a significantly smaller audience than Nixon’s, he had digital celebrities backing him, such as Hasan Piker and Isaiah Martin. The two influencers have millions of followers, but chances are most of them couldn’t cast a vote for Manley, only garner attention.
That attention did not translate into comparable support at the ballot box. Wasserman Schultz won about 45.6% of the vote in a five-way Democratic primary, while Manley finished third with roughly 14%.
The disconnect is not new. In Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate Race, Republican Mehmet Oz had over 1 million followers on social media, compared with the under 200,000 for now-Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
Oz entered politics after years as a nationally known television personality, meaning a significant online audience did not necessarily represent Pennsylvania voters.
That distinction is one reason follower counts and traction alone offer an imperfect measure of a candidate’s electoral strength.
Pew Research Center found that people who are already politically engaged are substantially more likely to follow candidates and political figures on social media than less-engaged users. It also found that 65% of people who followed political figures primarily followed those who shared their own political views.
Social media, in other words, may be better at identifying and activating existing supporters than persuading an entirely new electorate. Pew found 82% of social media users said they had never changed their view of a candidate because of something they saw on the platforms.
That leaves campaigns with essentially the same challenge they faced when Dean first demonstrated the political potential of the internet in 2004: turning attention into action.
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Mamdani showed how an online audience can become part of a larger campaign operation, feeding other arms of voter engagement. Nixon’s upset victory demonstrated how that model can help a candidate compete despite a significant financial disadvantage.
But the losses by candidates such as Manley show that digital popularity carries electoral weight only when the audience behind it can be converted into the voters a candidate needs to win.