In California, CalMatters’ voter guide is unparalleled, largely because of our accessible, comprehensive and data-rich coverage of statewide ballot propositions and how voting yes or no will affect everyday Californians.
Every election year, our voter guide is widely read, watched, and listened to. In 2024, however, we pushed ourselves further, launching three initiatives on TikTok to try reaching young voters, an age group that repeatedly has some of the lowest turnout every election. It’s also an age group that, usually, hasn’t heard of CalMatters.
To reach them, we (1) completely repackaged (and at times, rewrote) our voter guide resource for a Gen Z audience, (2) launched our own TikTok filter to help Gen Z voters decide how they felt about individual propositions, and (3) worked with California influencers to get our resources out there.
1. Made-for-Gen Z TikToks
We experimented a lot, failing multiple times before we found our first viral success when we started breaking down California propositions using a call center format. Our Gen Z politics reporter, Jenna Peterson, and our millennial audience engagement manager, Anna Almendrala worked hand-in-hand, creating skits where Jenna played both a confused voter, and a call center prop expert. TikTokers started paying attention, and we kept going, making and trying out organic ways to reach young voters on TikTok.
2. Launching our own TikTok filter
Like in previous elections, we created interactive quizzes that helped California voters figure out where they stood on each of the statewide propositions. These quizzes lived on our website.
But in 2024, after being inspired by lighthearted beauty industry TikTok filters that asked viewers to vote for makeup by tilting their heads, we created a series of CalMatters TikTok filters asking you if you thought the rent was too damn high — and other similar questions — that could help TikTokers decide how they’d vote on the state’s ballot propositions this year. (Our demo.)
When we set out to try this, we didn’t know if we’d be successful. We had never created a TikTok filter before, nor did we know how. But we made the investment to try and see how far we could get, and successfully launched our filters two weeks before the election.
3. Working with California influencers
For the first time ever, CalMatters worked with influencers to help make sure our voter guide reached young voters on TikTok. We selected six influencers based on common criteria — they were in California, they normally posted lifestyle videos, and they thought of young adults as one of their main audiences. We also asked them to clearly disclose that CalMatters was sponsoring their post, to create videos in their own voice, and to tell their audience about our voter guide.
