Donald Trump looks like he will be the GOP nominee for president again and only Taylor Swift can stop him from winning in November. OK–that’s a bit dramatic, but we should not underestimate Swift’s potential political power. A recent piece in USA Today suggests that Swift may ‘have helped register enough voters in a single day last September to swing close races in multiple races, with turnout experts predicting a strong youth vote for the 2024 presidential election.”
Here’s more:
After an Instagram post by Swift, a record of more than 30,000 people signed up through Vote.org duringĀ National Voter Registration Day, many of them teens who will be eligible to vote in this fall’s election. Among the top states for those new registrations: Texas, California, New York, Illinois and Florida.
Swift’s fanbase tends to be younger and more liberal than the country overall, and although the new voter registrations aren’t likely enough to affect the presidential election, several 2022 U.S. House races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, including in Colorado where Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert won her 2022 reelection by 546 votes.
Experts say there’s every indication youth voting will be high again this year, as it was in 2020.
“The younger generation is really starting to connect the dots between what they care about and participation numbers,” said Andrea Hailey, the CEO of nonpartisan Vote.org, which registered 279,400 new voters last year. “When you have someone registering 30,000 votes at a time it absolutely can have an impact.”
And this:
In her post last fall, Swift encouraged her 278 million followers worldwide to participate in the upcoming elections, but didn’t endorse any candidates or positions.
āIāve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my U.S. shows recently,ā she posted to her Instagram account. “I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year!”
Swift has repeatedly urged her fans to vote, although she usually remains neutral about candidates.
But in 2018 she endorsed two Democratic candidates for Congress in Tennessee, citing her opposition to Marsha Blackburn. Blackburn won with 54.7% of the vote for a U.S. Senate seat, beating Swift’s preferred candidate Phil Bredesen. Swift’s other endorsed candidate, Jim Cooper, won his House race.
In a documentary that captured Swift’s conversations with family and staff when considering those 2018 endorsements, she worried aloud that she should have more forcefully condemnedĀ Donald TrumpĀ during the 2016 campaign. In 2020, Swift declared to Trump “we will vote you out.”
Read the rest here.
Politico also ran a piece on Swift’s potential influence on the election back in September.
In the end, Taylor Swift may have more power to shape this election than Trump and Biden campaigns combined.