Some municipal candidates in Guelph use TikTok to reach young voters

How do you get young people to vote? Some candidates think the answer is right here on your TikTok feed. This is some next level stuff. I don't even look like that whatsoever. That's like defamation. That's my most viral TikTok and it's it is short but it is getting people my sign in front of them. They're seeing a lot of signs everywhere. Do you think people are going to vote for you because of that video? Yeah I do. I'd say that a little bit like I want people to do research look at my policies right look at the things that i'm passionate for but these local races because there are no political parties it really is name recognition and i think that being able to show people that i'm human right i'm able to take a joke good afternoon my name is russell and i am a wilderness explorer why are you on TikTok instagram facebook Are we on there? Is that right? Oh. When I'm mayor, we're going to have more of this and less of this. Voter turnout the last election was at 29%. The biggest push for us is making sure we can get that 29% to be somewhere closer to 30, 40% if we could. And we think that using these platforms will help us. Comments can be quite brutal at times. We have to meet people where they're at. Candidates are pouring their time into your For You page, but does it actually get more votes? depending on the trends they choose to use sometimes I'm like I don't know if that's appropriate for like the topics you're trying to talk about or like the nature of their platform we don't watch the news I mean like I don't see anything out like I'm only on TikTok you know what I mean like so if I see that they're act like engaging with like people like around our age yeah like it yeah it shows that they're like actually wanting to target people that are younger because they know that they're actually more active on social media than they are on the news? I think it brings down credibility slightly, but it's more relatable to some people, so depending on other policies and stuff. Municipal government tends to deal with plumbing issues, you know, like do we have enough sewers and pipes and roads, which tends not to be the most attractive for a younger person to be engaged in, despite the fact that it actually is probably one of the most fundamental things that we do in society, and that is just that infrastructure. You have to be engaged, you have to be in people's faces, you have to sort of become part of the algorithm, which is a really tough challenge for people to engage with. And it becomes a whole other way of connecting with people. But it's not a one time thing. It's repeated connections. And municipal politics is a really high bar, simply because we have so many races going on. There's a lot for voters to deal with. And young people especially tend to just shut that out. So to the extent to which you can get even a handful of new voters that are younger would be, I would claim that would be a success.