Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has made history, yet again. This time, it’s because she hosted the largest Zoom call ever held, with over 200,000 attendees from the advocacy group ‘White Women: Answer the Call’.
The record-breaking Zoom call was the latest in a series of virtual fundraisers designed to drum up support across different demographics, with similar calls being organized by black women and “White Dudes”.
With the sitting Vice President already raking in over $16 million from these virtual grassroots campaigns, and even more from big tech donations, her fundraising campaign has already broken records after Biden’s exit. Here’s what you need to know about Harris’ unprecedented zoom call, and her bid to win over social media.
Harris’ Call With ‘White Women: Answer the Call” Breaks Record
Presidential candidate and viral meme generator Kamala Harris has made history. No, not for the reasons you may expect, but for spearheading the largest Zoom call in the platform’s history.
The Zoom call in question took place during the fundraising event ‘White Women: Answer the Call’ which drew a virtual crowd of over 200,000 supporters. For reference, that’s roughly the same amount of people that make up the population of Richmond, Virginia.
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The call, which raised over $11 million for Harris’ presidential campaign, was so large it temporarily overwhelmed Zoom’s servers and even flooded the campaign’s donation link. However, except for these momentary glitches, the video call is widely considered a huge success and was the latest in a round of virtual grassroots events the Bay native has been running to drum up support across different voter demographics.
Harris’ Zoom Calls Mobilizes Support Across Different Demographics
The record-breaking call followed the success of a similar virtual call designed to mobilize Black female voters across the US. The call, which was organized by the advocacy group “Win With Back Women”, welcomed over 44,000 participants on Zoom, forcing an executive at the company to step in to increase the call’s capacity. The event was also viewed by 50,000 others from separate platforms and raised a total of $1.5 million for Harris’ campaign.
But the Presidential challenger isn’t just harnessing web conferencing software to capture female voters. On Monday night Harris ran a three-hour call titled “White Dudes for Kamala”, which raised more than $4 million in donations, and attracted over 190,000 attendants, including high-profile names like Mark Ruffalo and Jeff Bridges.
Silicon Valley Remains Split When it Comes to Harris
It’s not just grassroot voters who are throwing money at Harris’ campaign. In the 24-hour window after President Biden announced he would be stepping down from office, the former California Senator’s team received over $81 million from Democratic donors. This was the largest sum of money raised in a single day throughout the whole 2024 campaign.
While Harris has a critical stance on some hot-button tech issues like AI and privacy, she cut her teeth in San Francisco, a city renowned for its global tech industry. As a result, much of her campaign’s financial support has come from wealthy Silicon Valley donors like Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings who recently backed a campaign donation of $7 million.
Yet, while Harris has a friendly relationship with a number of wealthy tech investors, support across the industry is far from universal. Several tech titans, including controversial tech billionaire Elon Musk, have been throwing money towards Trump’s campaign this year because the Republican nominee has a much more laissez-faire approach to tech regulation.
Kamala Harris Is Doing The Internet Right
With the 2024 Presidential campaign being the first to take place after the Covid-19 pandemic, succesfully leveraging virtual technologies like social media has been a crucial trick for nominees.
Despite entering the race late, Harris has hit the ground running when it comes to her adoption of the internet. In addition to the success of her virtual rallies, the Vice President has scored a number of meme-worthy moments, including going viral for her “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” line at a White House event, and more recently, winning the support of internet ‘it girl’ Charlie XCX after changing her cover photo on social media platform X to a lime-green cover photo inspired by the pop stars Brat album cover.
kamala IS brat
— Charli (@charli_xcx) July 22, 2024
While Republican nominee Donald Trump has also garnered success on social media, with the New York native setting up his own popular social media company, Truth Social, and more recently using the photos of his failed assassination attempt to gain political capital, he hasn’t been able to latch onto viral moments quite as well as Harris in his current campaign.
However, whichever side of the political spectrum you fall, one thing is for certain – social media and platforms like Zoom will continue to be a vital tools for both Harris and Trump as the 2024 presidential race enters its next phase.
