How one week turned social media’s election narratives upside down

What a difference a week makes.

An ascendant Vice President Kamala Harris, backed by a wave of memes and coconut-tree-meets-Charli XCX videos, and a wounded JD Vance, hounded by his past comments about women and targeted with lewd jokes, have in a matter of days flipped the emerging online election narrative established by former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

This week, the names of Biden and Trump could hardly be found amid a flurry of discussion across X, TikTok and most anywhere else the internet discusses politics.

“It is a reverse of what I saw in 2016, when it felt like Trump had just taken over the internet,” Melissa Ryan, who runs consulting firm CARD Strategies and previously worked in digital strategy for Democratic campaigns and progressive causes, told NBC News. “Internet culture has been driving it, but I’ve seen women of all ages sharing coconut memes.”

Matt Gorman, a political analyst and executive vice president at digital marketing firm Targeted Victory who has advised Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress, said both campaigns have been marked by online enthusiasm in recent weeks, with a sharp uptick on the left now that the conversation has moved on from whether Biden should step aside.

But he was doubtful that the current online narratives will have an outsize impact on polling or the election itself.

“Understandably so, there’s been a lot more enthusiasm on the left, because they’re reverting to where they should have been at this point. It’s almost like a catharsis, all this energy around her,” Gorman said. “Both JD and Kamala, there’s been a lot of online chatter, a lot of online support and hate, but the fundamentals are the fundamentals.”

It’s difficult to