Kamala Harris Candidacy Excites the Political Web

Searchers want to know who she is, how to donate, and what’s up with the “coconut tree” meme, but also “why do people hate kamala harris”

The Democratic presidential candidate switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris has shaken up the race – and the internet. Similarweb can confirm that the ActBlue fundraising website (actblue.com) has attracted more daily traffic on Sunday and Monday than any other day this year. Meanwhile, internet users are searching for more information on Kamala Harris – and although those include “how do I donate?” searches, they also include people asking, “why do people dislike kamala harris?”

Key takeaways

• There were approximately 9 million searches on “kamala harris” Sunday and 3.3 million clicks on search results in web and mobile web traffic, according to Similarweb estimates, plus many more specific searches by people wanting to learn more about her.
• Searches for “kamala harris” were up 2,769% for the past 28 days versus the previous month. Most of that happened in the days since rumors began building and President Biden confirmed his “passing of the torch” to Harris on Sunday.
• Among the trending keywords other than Harris’s name (and misspellings of her name) were several related to her age, her parents, her ethnicity, her approval rating, whether she has children, and her coconut tree quote.
• Among search queries phrased as questions, “how old is kamala harris” was #1, followed by “does kamala harris have children” and “how to donate to kamala harris.” Then there were several variations on “why do people hate kamala harris” (details below).
• Traffic to actblue.com hit 2.2 million (M) visits on Sunday, an increase of more than 300% from the day before, and reached 2.9M on Monday, based on traffic from within the US.
• Democratic fundraising web traffic still doesn’t quite match the 3M daily traffic peak for WinRed (winred.com), the Republican fundraising website on May 31. That came after former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal conviction. The peak for winred.com during last week’s Republican nominating convention was 1.8M visits on July 15. These estimates are based on traffic from within the US.

9 million searches in a day

This is what the rise in searches on “kamala harris” looked like, with most of the resulting traffic going to Wikipedia and news sites.

Trending keywords, including the “coconut tree”

What were people searching for? Most of the keywords on the list below are self explanatory, but the “coconut tree” meme requires some explanation. During a White House event last year, she uttered a quirky quote that her fans have adopted as an ironic motto: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Other terms on the list relate to people trying to learn about her age or ethnicity (African American and Asian American) and her approval rating.

Questions people are asking

When people enter their search in the form of a question, those questions can tell us more about what they are thinking. Again, many of these are about her age and origin story.

Then there are those like “why do people hate kamala harris” and “why is kamala harris so unpopular.” We don’t necessarily know whether these searches reflect animosity toward Harris or questions from people who like her (or want to like her) and are trying to understand why other people don’t. Polling prior to her emergence as a presidential candidate tended to suggest that Kamala Harris was no more popular than Joe Biden, perhaps less so. That may change now that she has emerged from the relative obscurity of the vice presidency, but meanwhile these questions show people are aware of the doubts about her.

We detected more than 30,000 searches for “how to donate to kamala harris,” although it seems few people clicked directly from search to a fundraising page.

Fundraising momentum for the Democrats

Both parties funnel the bulk of their small dollar online donations to bespoke fundraising portals, ActBlue and WinRed. Until now, ActBlue has lagged in traffic and attention, but in recent days it has been catching up.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Contact: For more information, please write to press@similarweb.com.

Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".