President Donald Trump issued an executive order in early August that would ban TikTok and WeChat from operating in the U.S. unless its parent Chinese company, ByteDance, sells it to an American company by mid-September. The White House argues that the social media platform, known for its short videos, is nothing short of a security threat.
Microsoft and Oracle already announced plans to make bids to acquire ByteDance. Trump has publicly showed support for Oracle’s bid.
To better understand where they stand on the executive order and TikTok, Fortune and SurveyMonkey teamed up to poll 2,478 U.S. adults between August 17 and 18.*
We found the public isn’t thrilled by the executive order. But they aren’t strongly opposed to it either. Among U.S. adults, 50% oppose Trump’s executive order to force a sale of TikTok’s U.S. business, compared to who 41% support the order, and 9% are unsure.
But there is a massive divide in support for the order among Republicans (79%) and Democrats (13%), suggesting Americans’ opinions might be shaped more by political views than by the actual executive order or companies in question.
The hyperpartisan nature is a reminder to all businesses to be careful about getting in the crosshairs of political leaders: It only takes one tweet to shift your brand’s popularity.
TikTok is also synonymous with Gen Z—and they’re supporting the app in this fight with the White House. Among adults aged 18 to 24, 62% oppose the executive order to force a sale of TikTok. And 65% of TikTok users oppose it.
And among these Gen Zers, TikTok has a strong +22 point net favorability. Meanwhile, the platform has a negative net favorability among all age groups older than 24, and -20 points for Americans age 65 and up.
Then again, the younger crowd might prefer older peeps don’t download the app anyway.
*Methodology: The Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll was conducted among a national sample of 2,802 adults in the U.S. between July 17-21. This survey’s modeled error estimate is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The findings have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography.
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