While the conventional wisdom has long been that celebrity endorsements of political candidates don’t matter, Taylor Swift has demonstrated success in encouraging her army of fans to become civilly engaged and to register to vote.
It looks like Swift may have pulled off another voter registration coup when she went on Instagram Tuesday night, following the combative presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The pop mega-star let her 283 million followers know that she was endorsing Democrat Harris for president and her running mate, Tim Walz, for vice president. She also encouraged her followers to make sure they are registered to vote in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered!” wrote Swift, who is expected to appear Wednesday night at the MTV Video Awards, where she she is nominated for 12 awards, eight for her “Fortnight” music video.
“I also find it’s much easier to vote early,” Swift continued. “I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.” She shared a link on Instagram Story, which directed people to Vote.gov, the U.S. government’s official destination for information about voting, including how to register to vote or to update their registration status in their home states.
Over the next half day, more than 337,000 visitors landed on the Vote.gov site, directed there by the URL that was shared by Swift, according to a spokesperson with the General Services Administration.
The more than 337,000 visitors certainly represents a sizable number, though it wasn’t immediately known whether those visits translated into registrations. Vote.gov directs voters to their state election websites for state-specific voting information, and voters must register directly within their state.
Still, that number of visitors shows that the singer-songwriter, with her global following and broad cultural appeal, can drive enthusiasm about political engagement and about particular candidates.
“Taylor Swift’s impact on voter engagement is undeniable,” said Andrea Hailey, CEO of the nonprofit Vote.org, a nonpartisan registration and get-out-the-vote technology platform. “The important thing to remember is that Taylor’s work serves as a model that everyone with a platform can use to encourage Americans to participate in civic engagement. At the heart of it all, every American is an influencer and can help people around them register, vote, and protect access to the ballot box.”
During and after the debate Tuesday night, Vote.org similarly saw a 585% spike in visitors, using the site’s tools to register or verify their registration, compared with the same 6-to-9 p.m. time period over the previous eight days. The debate, which ran about an hour and 45 minutes, aired on the West Coast during that time period, while Swift’s endorsement came shortly after the debate ended.
Swift has previously allied herself with Vote.org and directed followers to its voter registration services. When she spoke on the importance of civic engagement for National Voter Registration Day in September 2023, her fans listened, according to NPR.
For National Voter Registration Day, she directed her fans to Vote.org, which in turn recorded more than 35,000 new registrations, NPR reported. At the time, Hailey said the site saw a record 1225% jump in registrations, with an average of 13,000 users ever 30 minutes.
“I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my U.S. shows recently,” Swift told her fans at the time. She was referring to anyone who came to see one of her U.S. performances of her blockbuster Eras tour. “Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year!”
On Tuesday night, minutes after Harris and Trump stepped off the debate stage in Philadelphia, Swift more or less broke the internet by posting her endorsement of Harris.
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Swift wrote in a lengthy statement. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
Swift signed her post as “Childless Cat Lady,” a pointed reference to Trump’s running mate JD Vance and his notorious statements that demeaned women, cat owners and couples without children. Swift accompanied her endorsement with a photo of herself with one of her cats, Benjamin Button, her pet Ragdoll.
On Wednesday morning, Trump tried to act like he didn’t care that Swift endorsed his opponent. In a chat with the hosts of Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” he warned that the “liberal” pop star would “pay a price” at the “marketplace,” suggesting that she would lose conservative fans. But as much Trump tried to appear unconcerned, Swift’s Harris endorsement garnered more than 1 million likes within just 13 minutes of being posted. It had more than 9 million likes as of late Wednesday afternoon.
Swift first spoke out on politics during the 2018 midterms, when the former country star endorsed Democrat candidates in her home state of Tennessee. Her Instagram post, shared with her then-112 million Instagram followers, is credited with getting more than 100,000 people to register on Vote.org.
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