A bit of context: the presidential candidate in question was predicted below 1% on all polls days before the election. He declared a campaign budget of absolute zero. He had no posters, no tents, no apparitions on TV, absolutely nothing. After a massive presence on TikTok in the last couple of weeks he won 23% of the votes, placing him first and wining a spot in the final elections where just the first two placed candidates run.
Currently the elections in Romania are in an total chaos. The Romanian Constitutional Court ordered an unprecedented recount of the votes, even though the count was sanctioned by all the parties through their observers. Also the country's Defense Council declared they have proof of cybernetic attacks which influenced the elections.
That sounds like either the pollsters or the people running the election have significantly bigger problems than whatever that candidate might or might not have done. How did they not find any of the people swayed by TikTok? Why are they even looking at TikTok at that point?
Lets analyze a bit just on the top of our heads what kind of content goes viral on social media?
I so far almost (I write here almost just in case I missed one case) NEVER saw any rational, sensible discussion.
So no, not all parties or arguments get the same amount of exposure even if they use TiKTok. Only the simplest (as in ignoring the complexity of situations), conspirationist, false and sometimes stupid challenges ones go viral.
It's not hard to create content for TikTok (also, I don't think it's hard to do "debunk shorts" if they wanted to). They should just do it as this new "short video" form clearly works.
Currently the elections in Romania are in an total chaos. The Romanian Constitutional Court ordered an unprecedented recount of the votes, even though the count was sanctioned by all the parties through their observers. Also the country's Defense Council declared they have proof of cybernetic attacks which influenced the elections.