Can a candidate's TikTok presence change their standing in the presidential election?

A new analysis shows Vice President Kamala Harris received a significant surge in interest and positive sentiment on a certain social media platform after President Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.

According to the first Zelf political report, over 85,200 videos about Harris were posted on TikTok since the July 21 announcement, generating more than 1.8 billion views. That's almost double the number of videos posted about her last year, according to Zelf.

For the woman herself, Harris' first, eight-second video that she posted upon joining TikTok on Thursday quickly went viral and now has nearly 30 million views and over 4.5 million likes. She also has gained 3.5 million followers.

But with the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump , and Harris, the Democratic front-runner, both aiming to gain the younger vote, could TikTok be the path to do so? Zelf CEO Pepijn Van Kesteren told Scripps News it very well could be.

"We could pretty easily say that these elections could be called the TikTok elections; 2016 was the Facebook election, where a lot of political content was distributed on Facebook," Van Kesteren said. "TikTok really is where most Americans are now spending their time."

Data from last month shows 170 million people in the U.S. use TikTok, and on average, they're spending nearly 54 minutes per day on the platform. That makes it especially important for a presidential candidate to meet voters where they are and establish a presence there.

But although a different social media app may have played a role the 2016 election, Van Kesteren said there is a difference that candidates should remember when it comes to TikTok.

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With Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram, political content can be distributed, promoted or published in multiple forms and is often targeted toward a chosen demographic. But with TikTok, the algorithm can distribute videos in various ways, and political parties can't necessarily control all facets of their promoted content.

This isn't always a bad thing, though, as it can give the candidate a more authentic look at the discourse within their constituents.

"Most content on TikTok is created by everyday people, and so [politicians] have less of a chance to dominate the conversation," Van Kestern told Scripps News. "I think the amount of content that's distributed that isn't controlled by the political parties is just so much bigger, and so if you as a candidate want to understand what is living in the minds of people, Tiktok is a fantastic place to be."

But even if either candidate is dominating on TikTok, as Harris is now according to Zelf's data, the key is to keep the viewers' short attention span.

Van Kesteren pointed to the TikTok content that was published in the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump. In the week after, more than 400,000 videos were posted about him, which was almost an eight-fold increase, and there was a positive discourse from both sides of the aisle, Van Kesteren said.

A week after that, Harris took over as the holder of the highest net promoter score that Zelf has seen this election cycle and is still seeing. The net promoter score, or NPS, is an assessment of how positive or negative the discourse surrounding a person or topic is within a given time frame.

"What we see is that the majority of content that is being engaged with is from ordinary people," Van Kesteren said. "So what should candidates do? I would say they need to make sure they have a message that resonates with people, and hopefully, people have good things to say about that."

To view Van Kesteren's full interview, watch the video above.