Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has floated a potential ban of TikTok, a Chinese-owned video-sharing social media app with a huge base of young American users, but polling suggests that such a move could have dire political implications for President Trump’s reelection bid.

Young voters will be critical in deciding the outcome of the 2020 election; youth activism and voter turnout has risen sharply since Trump’s election, according to studies from Tufts University, which also showed that the youth vote played a major role in handing Democrats a massive win in 2018.

TikTok has ingrained itself into the day-to-day lives of young Americans in recent months, while polls suggest voters are not strongly motivated by issues like national security and international relations, meaning a TikTok ban by the administration could hold considerable political risk without a significant upside for Trump.

It was also used to inflate ticket registration figures for Trump’s Tulsa rally in June, with the Daily Mail reporting that as many as 300,000 of the roughly 1 million requests touted by the campaign came from TikTok users. .

The US has 37.2 million TikTok users, and that figure is projected to rise to as much as 45.4 million in 2020, according to Statista, which also reports that around two-thirds of those users are adults.

Reuters reported in November that the Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews trade deals for potential national security threats, was investigating TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly, for which it did not seek clearance from the CFIUS.

I am a news desk reporter covering politics and the 2020 election

I am a news desk reporter covering politics and the 2020 election