How candidates are using TikTok to shape election

This is the first general election in the UK in which TikTok has played a prominent role

Election campaigning on social media is nothing new. Where political candidates once vied for column inches and debate time, they now concentrate huge efforts on drawing in likes and followers online.

But while Facebook ads and Twitter threads are familiar ground, this is the first general election in the UK in which TikTok has played a prominent role.

Already a cultural force, defining music charts, box office hits and bestseller lists, the vertical video platform could soon shape an election.

But how does TikTok fit into the daily grind of campaigning? We spoke to MP hopefuls in the West, and those campaigning with them, to find out.

Reform candidate for Taunton and Wellington, Charles Hansard, has garnered hundreds of thousands of views since he first started posting on 1 June.

Describing the channel as "a bit of a vanity project", he told the BBC: "You mustn’t take it too seriously, to be honest.

"You mustn’t go ‘oh we’re going to be elected because all these people like me’ - it doesn’t work like that. The only poll is the poll on 4 July.”

Independent Abi McGuire, standing in the Wells and Mendip Hills constituency in Somerset, has been on Tik Tok for almost a year.

"Because we're an independent campaign and not from a political party, it was really important to get our messaging out really early," she said.

"One of the ways to do that was social media, in bitesize chunks, so it’s sort of like feeding people slowly so they can start to build-up a picture of what we’re trying to explain, and that takes time."

In a bid to grab viewers' attention, some candidate and party TikTok accounts have been trying out the latest trends.

So far in this election, we've seen the main parties favouring a meme-like approach - think loud, jarring soundtracks, heavy editing and templates that have gone viral elsewhere on the platform.

But this is not an approach favoured by everyone.

Mr Hansard said his videos were "quite simple", adding: "I’m quite a serious individual, I’m not a jazzy kind of guy.

"So my message is, as an ex-soldier, clear and concise – ‘that’s what we’re doing, that’s where we’re going, that’s what we’ve done'."

Jake Shepton, who runs Ms McGuire's social media accounts, said TikTok had "almost become a race" between parties to go viral.

He said: "I think it’s funny but I don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate because I think turning your campaign into a meme just to try to get more young people to vote for you is morally right.

"That’s why I’ve never pursued turning Abi into a meme – I want her to be genuine and share her message without having to become a meme.”

The Green Party's digital communications officer Marcus Cain said that to go viral teams had to be "really on it", adding that their campaign aimed to mix "the less serious" with the "more serious".

He described this approach as "really helpful" because if a clip "performs really well and it draws a lot of people to our account they’ll hopefully see the other stuff we’re putting out as well."

"That’s the reason we’ve not gone down the route some of the other parties have of just doing really tongue in cheek stuff and nothing else," he said.

Green co-leader Carla Denyer, standing in Bristol Central, features heavily on the party's TikTok page.

The party's strategy on the platform, Mr Cain said, was focused on two main strands - using content from pre-planned events such as the campaign launch in Bristol, and reacting to developing news topics using clips from interviews with traditional broadcasters.

He added that X (formerly Twitter) had become "less useful" to the party since its takeover by Elon Musk.

The party has, however, seen "huge growth" on Instagram.

Everyone the BBC spoke to for this story said one of the driving forces behind their decision to take the campaign to TikTok was the hope content would reach younger audiences, particularly those voting for the first time.

Mr Shepton said: "Targeting people like non-voters or people who have been disengaged has been so important, particularly on TikTok, as well as first-time voters."

Mr Cain added: "The youth vote is really important, particularly in Bristol. Carla is doing great work and is really confident in that sort of stuff, which we really try to utilise.”

But while the platform is hugely targeted towards young people, and candidates have seen it reaching the under-30s, they are not the only people using the platform.

Monty Durnam, social media assistant for Mr Hansard's campaign, told the BBC: "I look at the analytics and actually we’ve got a lot of middle-aged viewers, a lot of engagement does come from that older audience."

We reached out to other candidates across the West Country using TikTok this election - Taunton and Wellington Liberal Democrat candidate Gideon Amos and Chippenham Labour Party candidate Ravi Venkatesh - but did not receive a response.