4 months down, 4 days to go
Wow! It’s crazy to think we are 4 days away from Election Day.
We never imagined that Bigtent would get as big as it has these last few months, but it’s cool to look back and see how much we’ve done since we got funding in July and started up our voter registration and voter outreach efforts in August. Since then, we’ve registered over 25k voters, 85.9% of which are Gen Z voters (under the age of 25), with over 11,000 of these voters coming from swing states, and we’ve partnered with hundreds of digital organizers on content to get their peers out to vote.
We couldn’t do any of this work without our incredibly diverse team of digital organizers. From Native Americans, to Black Women, to Differently Abled individuals, we’ve built a strong coalition of Gen Z voters that is diverse in every sense of the word. They represent you and me, and they represent America.
GOTV TikTok Posts by our Digital Organizers
What’s more, our work is likely making a difference in these states and turning out young voters like never before. Tufts’ Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement helps back up that assumption:
More than 7 million young voters between the ages of 18-29 have already voted in this election, including 4 million in 14 swing states, showing that first time voters like Gen Z are fed up and want to have their voices heard in this election.
More young voters have voted now in 13 states than the young voter population in 2016 had at this point in the election.
Texas, a state that makes up 20% of our total voters registered and of which a majority of those voters identified themselves as LatinX, is now being considered a “toss up” by press outlets like MSNBC. (As a reminder, we’ve done a TON of work in Texas with partnered organizations!). More than 1 million young people have already cast ballots in the Lone Star State, nearly approaching the 1.2 million total votes cast by youth (both early and on Election Day) in 2016.
Gen Z Early Vote Stats from MSNBC as of 10/23/2020
We expect these numbers to go up, and right now as we’ve been working on messaging, content, and strategy, it feels pretty good to know that our Make A Plan, Social Pressure, and Vote Early and In Person voter outreach campaigns just might be making a difference
You Don’t Get Big Without Ruffling a Few Feathers Along the Way
We hit a new milestone last week, getting “shout outs” from both Donald Trump Jr. and Breitbart News! While this may sound alarming to some, we take huge pride in this.
Wow! Thanks for the free PR, Jr. 😉
While they may have intended these to be “hits” on us, we really see their smears, by calling our work a “covert operation,” (when newsflash, it’s not) as a form of us building credibility in the voter advocacy space.
Catchy headlines are fun, but using “hits” on us to gain traction and debunk these headlines has been even more fun!
Thanks to a BBC documentary we were featured in last week covering TikTok and the election, we’ve gotten a lot of great coverage as people become more curious about why Gen Z is showing up big in this election, and what effect TikTok is having on that.
A clip from the BBC Doc, featuring our Digital Organizer Maya
In the process, we’ve had some impactful conversations with legal teams, FEC/FTC experts, and even started the conversation with TikTok about the work we do. Those conversations are still ongoing, but the one major takeaway we’ve had is that paying organizers to organize their peers on platforms to register to vote and GOTV is not paid political advertising or influencer marketing, it’s organizing. There’s currently no guidance on this subject other than policies the platforms themselves have put out about what is and isn’t allowed on the platform.
Bigtent Starts Dominating GOTV - Literally
Working with Sex Workers as Digital Organizers on Only Fans
Social pressure to vote works best when applied from all sides, which is why we’ve been working with 20 sex workers to help pressure their fans and friends to get out the vote in a campaign called I Only Date Voters.
Sex workers like Jasmine are finding their political voice by GOTV via their social media followings and on Only Fans
The campaign has been incredibly fun as sex workers post to Instagram and OnlyFans and urge viewers to pledge to vote on our website ionlydatevoters.com.
Social pressure tactics for voting work in all kinds of ways! 🗳🤗👏
Hot off the press (no pun intended), we were covered in Rolling Stone, who said that one of our sex worker organizers’ videos “makes anything by the Lincoln Project pale in comparison.” We’ll scream that from the rooftops! Sex workers’ contributions to politics has constantly been underplayed, so we’re so proud our organizers are getting the attention they deserve.
TikTok GOTV
With 4 days to make every social media post, dollar we spend, and minute of our time count we’ll be ramping up our efforts with Digital Organizers making posts that feature social pressure like Jay’s “Meangirls 2020” and Noah’s “Vote Early and In Person” TikTok Posts.
We’re seeing major virality from these posts as our Digital Organizers make them their own with an “America’s Next Top Voter” vibe of what they’re wearing to the polls and pop culture references to cult classics like Mean Girls. Noah’s post has already gotten 1.5 million views in the last week alone -- imagine how many young voters have seen that and voted!!!!!
Coming Full Circle and Back to Lenses
Bigtent started as a group of people working together to make memes and lenses (filters) over a year ago when we were a volunteer operation and now four days away from election day we’re back at it more than ever!
In the past week we’ve rolled out six different lenses for Snapchat and Instagram (with more to come over the weekend!) and got amazing results. In total we’ve already had over 81 thousand shares from these lenses, and of these 61 thousand were from the “My Future 2021” crystal ball lens. Hmm...seems like people are excited and hopeful for change, doesn’t it?