{"id":912,"date":"2024-11-12T11:38:17","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T11:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=912"},"modified":"2024-11-15T15:30:43","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T15:30:43","slug":"momentum-is-a-meme","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-7-popular-culture\/momentum-is-a-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Momentum is a meme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Prof. Ryan M. Milner<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor in the Department of Communication at the College of Charleston.\u00a0He studies how online interaction matters socially, politically, and culturally. He is the author and co-author of four books, including\u00a0You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape\u00a0<\/em>(2021, the MIT Press) and\u00a0The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online\u00a0<\/em>(2017, Polity Press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LinkedIn: @rmmilner
Email: rmmilner@charleston.edu<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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78. Momentum is a meme<\/a> (Prof Ryan M. Milner)
79. Partisan memes and how they were perceived in the 2024 U.S. presidential election<\/a> (Dr Prateekshit \u201cKanu\u201d Pandey, Dr Daniel Lane)
80. The intersection of misogyny, race, and political memes... America has a long way to go, baby!<\/a> (Dr Gabriel B. Tait)
81. Needs Musk: Trump turns to the manosphere<\/a> (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)
82. \u201cWooing the manosphere: He\u2019s just a bro.\u201d Donald Trump\u2019s digital transactions with \"dude\" influencers<\/a> (Prof Mark Wheeler)
83. Star supporters<\/a> (Prof John Street)
84. Pet sounds: Celebrity, meme culture and political messaging in the music of election 2024<\/a> (Dr Adam Behr)
85. The stars came out for the 2024 election. Did it make a difference?<\/a> (Mark Turner)
86. Podcasting as presidential campaign outreach<\/a> (Ava Kalinauskas, Dr Rodney Taveira)
87. Value of TV debates reduced during Trump era<\/a> (Prof Richard Thomas, Dr Matthew Wall)
88. America\u2019s \u201cfun aunt\u201d: How gendered stereotypes can shape perceptions of women candidates<\/a> (Dr Caroline Leicht)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Conveying momentum was a crucial campaign goal for both the Democrats and Republicans during the 2024 U.S. presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republicans needed to portray former President Donald Trump as a winner despite his electoral college loss in 2020 and his popular vote losses in both 2020 and 2016. They also needed to declare \u201cwe are winning\u201d throughout the campaign so they could falsely claim \u201cthe election was stolen\u201d if they lost, a strategy Trump implemented<\/a> as late as 4:39 PM on election day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats needed to portray Vice President Kamala Harris as a winner despite her serving with an unpopular<\/a> president and representing a party that handed her the reigns without a primary. She also needed to convince the electorate that her unprecedented, breakneck 107-day campaign was a populist groundswell, assuaging fears that she didn\u2019t have enough time to \u201cintroduce herself<\/a>\u201d to voters before the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If elections are meme wars<\/a>, then \u201cmomentum\u201d was a bombastic 2024 battleground. Each campaign and its supporters tried to meme momentum into existence by declaring momentum, showcasing momentum, and hoping that momentum would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The goal for each campaign was not just to win support but to show that they had <\/em>won support so that others would join the movement and head to the polls. Thus, social media brimmed with yard sign counts, crowd size comparisons, and anecdotes about converted neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The algorithms played their part, guiding users to specific stories. X, owned by Trump surrogate Elon Musk, reportedly juiced rightwing content and amplified Republican politicians<\/a>. Meanwhile, 12-year-old influencer Knowa De Baraso told Sky News, “Kamala Harris is winning the fyp battle<\/a>,\u201d saying her content was beating out Trump\u2019s on TikTok\u2019s \u201cfor you page\u201d and that her celebrity endorsements were getting more attention than his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As 2024 wore on, the electorate read the early-vote tea leaves<\/a>, interpreted polling averages (which, noticeably, this cycle included more rightwing pollsters<\/a>), and rode the immaculate vibes<\/a> to the precipice of victory. Each side memed their momentum into existence so well that two completely counterfactual tweets appeared in my X \u201cfor you page\u201d on election day, one right next to the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican entrepreneur and Trump backer Vivek Ramaswamy proclaimed on November 4th that there are \u201ctwo possibilities: we’re in an echo chamber, or Trump wins big. My gut says the latter.<\/a>\u201d Meanwhile, former Republican congressman and Trump detractor Joe Walsh speculated on November 5th, \u201cI think she\u2019s gonna win by more than people think.<\/a>\u201d Each post got more than 2.5 million views. The algorithm must have noticed my inability to predict a winner and fed me both futures at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Schr\u00f6denger\u2019s momentum can\u2019t exist in two states forever, and eventually, we had to open the box. Somebody had to carry the day. That was Trump and the Republicans, who won the Presidential electoral college and the popular vote and took control of the Senate. As this is being drafted, they\u2019re also inching closer<\/a> to a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, to say that Trump and the Republicans must really have had the momentum all along is a misinterpretation, as it would have been to declare the contrary had Harris and the Democrats won. Electoral momentum was a meme, after all, which means it existed because people proclaimed it into existence by hearing it, internalizing it, and spreading it. It existed as a narrative, as a story we speculated into being in the moment and will revise with hindsight in the aftermath. A key revision we\u2019ll have to make about 2024 is that all this talk of momentum didn\u2019t coincide with record voting; turnout was about 65 percent of the electorate<\/a>, slightly below the 67 percent we saw in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impulse to narrativize momentum underlies damaging<\/a> \u201chorserace\u201d coverage that imagines each candidate jockeying to a metaphorical finish line. It also underlies the tendency to cover vote counts as real-time back-and-forth lead changes. As if we\u2019re watching a football game and not incremental reports of a result settled before we opened the box. No lead \u201cchanges hands\u201d on election night despite the red and blue mirages<\/a> we see as we refresh our feeds. And no amount of screaming \u201cSTOP THE COUNT!<\/a>\u201d will change the actual number of votes cast for any candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best short-term advice for each election cycle may be to ignore the horserace coverage, the polls, the early vote totals, the crowd sizes, the signs, and the meta memeing on all of it and just vote. One ballot, still and quiet in the middle of a bandwagon tempest of good and bad vibes. When we can\u2019t know what\u2019s momentum and what\u2019s mirage, we need to find our motivation internally and consistently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best long-term advice for capturing true momentum may be to build it from the ground up. Not in 107 days or even a two-year campaign cycle. But through sustained grassroots pushes and slow, intentional organizing. By a consistent message, clear outcomes, and connected leaders. Vibes are good, but vibes won\u2019t save us. Momentum has to be more than an election season meme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Ryan M. Milner Professor in the Department of Communication at the College of Charleston.\u00a0He studies how online interaction matters socially, politically, and culturally. He is the author and co-author of four books, including\u00a0You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape\u00a0(2021, the MIT Press) and\u00a0The Ambivalent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1019,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-912","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMomentum is a meme - Election Analysis - United States<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-7-popular-culture\/momentum-is-a-meme\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Momentum is a meme - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Prof. Ryan M. 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