Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in US election has sparked an ‘unprecedented’ spike in voter registrations
Taylor Swift’s decision to wade into the US presidential race has had an immediate and “unprecedented” effect.
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Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris for the upcoming US presidential election appears to have yielded immediate results, with an astonishing surge in the number of Americans registering to vote.
A much-needed surge, one might say, as there are signs that Ms Harris is underperforming among younger voters – a demographic group she needs to win overwhelmingly if she is to defeat Donald Trump in November.
Swift announced her endorsement of Ms Harris right after her debate against Mr Trump on Tuesday, US time.
“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” the musician wrote on Instagram.
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and (Democratic vice presidential nominee) Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.
“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.
“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.
“I also want to say, especially to first-time voters: remember that to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates.”
She directed her followers to the official US government website vote.gov, which walks Americans through the registration process.
According to the General Services Administration, which runs vote.gov, by 2pm on Wednesday – not even 24 hours after Swift’s Instagram post – 338,000 people had visited the site via the custom URL she had provided. That number is still going up.
Swift has a staggering 283 million followers on Instagram. To put that in context, Ms Harris herself has a mere (by comparison) 18 million.
Tom Bonier, from the data firm TargetSmart, told CBS News the impact of Swift’s endorsement should be measured not just by the enthusiasm of existing Harris supporters, but by the tangible increase in voter registrations.
“We can see some of the back-end data,” Mr Bonier said.
“What we saw was this really massive increase. We’re calling it ‘the Swift effect’ now, because it’s really unlike anything I’ve seen. We’re seeing a 400 or 500 per cent increase in people coming to try to register to vote immediately following the debate, and in that period after Taylor Swift posted on Instagram.
“What’s really remarkable about that is, usually you’ll see these increases and they’ll kind of fade away. This time we’ve seen the increase continue through the last two days, into today.
“We’re seeing this continued spike of four or five times what you would normally see.”
He pointed out that, according to his firm’s data from 2020, “over 80 per cent” of Americans who register to vote this close to an election do end up casting a ballot.
“It’s likely that they’re going to come out on election day, or before election day in the early voting,” he said of the new registrants.
In another interview, with the Meidas Touch network, Mr Bonier stressed that “this intensity and enthusiasm is really unprecedented”, and surpasses what he saw when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade before the midterm elections in 2022.
Remember, voting is voluntary in the United States. So in addition to winning over voters in the centre, both campaigns need to motivate their strongest demographics to show up.
Trump campaign brushes off Swift’s influence
Mr Trump’s nominee for the vice presidency, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, was asked about Swift’s intervention in politics during an interview on Fox News yesterday.
“We admire Taylor Swift’s music. But I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music, or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most people,” Mr Vance said.
“When grocery prices go up by 20 per cent, it hurts most Americans. It doesn’t hurt Taylor Swift. When housing prices become unaffordable, it doesn’t affect Taylor Swift, or any other billionaire.”
Critics on Twitter were swift (sorry) to point out that Mr Vance’s favoured candidate, Mr Trump, was himself a billionaire reality TV celebrity before he entered politics.
In any case, Mr Trump and Mr Vance both appear to have played a role in provoking Swift to go public with her thoughts on the election.
Mr Trump seems to have annoyed her by posting fake, AI-generated images on his social media platform, Truth Social, which suggested she’d urged her followers to support him.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift said in her endorsement of Ms Harris.
“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.
“The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
Mr Vance, meanwhile, seems to have caught Swift’s attention with a number of past comments criticising childless women, whom he once infamously described as “childless cat ladies”.
“So many of the leaders of the left – I hate to be so personal about this – they’re people without kids, trying to brainwash the minds of our children. That really disorients me and it really disturbs me,” he said in one such quote.
And during an interview in 2021, Mr Vance described leading Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.
“It’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC. The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said.
“And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
Ms Harris is, in fact, a stepmother to two children with her husband, Doug Emhoff. Mr Buttigieg, the Biden administration’s Transportation Secretary, is the father of adopted twins with his husband, Chasten.
Swift signed off her Instagram post with the words: “With love and hope, Taylor Swift, childless cat lady.”
‘Not doing as well’: Harris’s worrying weakness
In her efforts to win over younger voters, Ms Harris may need more help, from people with Swift’s level of influence, than she would care to admit.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten today highlighted data showing the Democrat is still running behind the margins Joe Biden racked up in the youngest age group four years ago.
And you’ll recall that, had mere tens of thousands of votes flipped in a few key states, Mr Biden would have lost to Mr Trump.
“You go back four years ago. At this point, Joe Biden had a 28-point advantage,” Mr Enten pointed out.
Before he withdrew from the 2024 race, Mr Biden’s lead among young voters had diminished to just 7 per cent. Ms Harris has improved on that, but is still well short of the advantage her side enjoyed in 2020.
“She’s only up by 15 points. That is significantly less. It’s only about half the margin Joe Biden was pulling (four years ago),” said Mr Enten.
“So Kamala Harris will absolutely welcome in the support of Taylor Swift, if she can move young voters at all, because the bottom line is Kamala Harris is not doing as well among young voters as you might expect a Democrat to do.”
He also stressed the importance of new voter registrations, an area in which Democrats have been far outstripped by their opponents during this presidential term.
“The bottom line is Republicans have been doing a significantly better job of registering voters than Democrats have been doing over the last four years, and getting folks to switch over from Democratic registration to Republican registration,” he said.
“Kamala Harris will definitely welcome the idea, if Taylor Swift can bring in some more younger voters, Democratic-leaning voters in the electorate.”
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