Will 2024 be remembered as the influencer election?

Creators have played roles in elections since the Obama years, but the 2024 election cycle is shaping up to be a landmark moment for politically active influencers. As some creators make serious challenges to Congressional and Senate seats, others are speaking their minds in campaigns that respect their authority among young voters.

One of those campaigns is led by Priorities USA and Somos Votantes, who teamed up to reach out to the 36.2 million U.S. Latinos who will be eligible to vote in November 2024. The two firms recruited four Latino influencers, who used sponsored videos to discuss the issues that matter most to them.

The videos included in the campaign show the evolution of political influencer marketing over the past decade. Early attempts in that arena — such as the 2015 creator interview with President Barack Obama — had a more scripted feel, even though participants delivered serious and hard-hitting questions.

Nine years later, Priorities USA and Somos Votantes allowed partners to choose the topics of their videos, according to Axios. “Having these content creators who have a very authentic and an intentional relationship with their followers being the ones that deliver a political message can be really powerful,” said Priorities USA Executive Director Danielle Butterfield. “We see that corporate brands are using content creators and influencers to get their message across, and there’s no reason why we can’t deploy that same tactic in politics.”

Comedian Christian Maldonado centered his entry around the need to secure time off from work to go vote. Daniella Legarda 

paired her plea for abortion rights with a recipe for patacones.

These short videos, impactful as they may be, are only a fraction of the creator-led efforts that are influencing the 2024 election cycle. The Biden Administration recognized the rising potential of influencer outreach by announcing a Creator Economy Conference, which will hit the White House on August 14

Much has been made of the grassroots TikTok movement that has propped up Kamala Harris‘ Presidential run, but more ambitious creators are going beyond Brat Summer memes and taking political action into their own hands. In Utah, skiing creator Caroline Gleich — who reaches more than 223,000 followers on Instagram — has become the Democratic nominee for Senate.

Gleich is unlikely to defeat incumbent John Curtis in deep-red Utah, but she has turned the environmental activism she promotes on her channel into a full-fledged political platform. On the other side of the aisle, firearms influencer Brandon Herrera ran for a Congressional seat in Texas, though he lost in the primary.

Even if Gleich and Herrera both fall short, the takeaway from their runs — and from the assorted influencer campaigns that have popped up this election cycle — is clear. It’s only a matter of time before creators’ influence among young voters gives them spots in office. In the future, will we look back on 2024 as the inflection point where that trend took off?