Taylor Swift is nobody’s idea of an opening act, and she followed Kamala Harris’s first U.S. presidential debate performance minutes later by endorsing the Democratic nominee.
Swift made the endorsement for the Nov. 5 presidential election in an Instagram post to her 283 million followers, calling Harris a “steady-handed, gifted leader.”
“There were people this morning on my TikTok page who were literally crying because of this news, just crying out of joy and relief,” said Brian Donovan, a University of Kansas professor who teaches a course called The Sociology of Taylor Swift.
The impact of celebrity endorsements on voting results is difficult to isolate from other factors, and the research that exists largely predates an era where social media and influencers help drive narratives and news coverage. An all-star lineup in the multi-city Vote for Change tour largely stumped for John Kerry in 2004 — the Democrat didn’t win, though it’s possible the tour’s voter mobilization efforts had some impact, as turnout in the youngest cohort jumped nearly 10 percentage points from the previous two elections.
Swift won one and lost one in specific endorsements of candidates for U.S. Congress in her home state of Tennessee in 2018, but neither of those contests were seen as toss-ups before she did so.
In an April survey conducted by Tennessee’s Beacon Center, a free market think-tank, 81 per cent said a Swift endorsement would not affect the way they plan to vote, with 12 per cent saying it would make them more likely to vote for her endorsed candidate, and five per cent saying it would make them less likely.
“Fans aren’t blind followers of their celebrities, but rather, they engage celebrities in rigorous ways,” said Dr. Ashley Hincke, associate professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, who’s been studying online fan communities and political discourse for 15 years.
There has been one notable case study, which concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primaries “had statistically and politically significant effects on Obama’s political outcomes,” estimating that over one million votes went the Illinois senator’s way as he battled Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
LISTEN | New Yorker reporters on the debate, and that endorsement:
Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud25:00Why the U.S. presidential debate made for great TV, and Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala
Donald Trump has long been known as the presidential candidate that TV created – but now Kamala Harris might be beating him at his own game. The morning after the debate, The New Yorker’s Vinson Cunningham and Tyler Foggatt join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about how the political showdown made for great television, and Taylor Swift’s surprise endorsement.
‘Full-throated,’ earlier endorsement than 2020
There are reasons to think Swift could have an Oprah-like effect, but in the general election.
“Celebrity endorsements don’t tend to move the needle of public opinion as much as people think or as much as people want, but Taylor Swift is not an ordinary celebrity,” says Donovan.
First, the nature of the endorsement was, according to Donovan, “unusually full-throated and enthusiastic,” both in and of itself and compared to her 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden. While Swift was popular then, multiple album releases since and the blockbuster Eras tour have sent her popularity to levels arguably not seen at least since Michael Jackson in the 1980s.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, this election does not feature two 70-something men as in 2020, but a very known quantity in Trump against the first nominated woman of colour. Eligible women voters have reliably turned out to vote at a rate three to four percentage points higher than men in presidential elections the past 20 years, even without a Swift endorsement and the re-emergence of abortion as a top issue for Democrats after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Swift’s effect on the youngest of voters will also likely be studied by future researchers. Just under 52 per cent of eligible voters between 18 and 24 cast a vote in 2020, some 24 percentage points lower than the 65 to 74 bracket, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Celebs can spark engagement
For Hinck, the wording of the Swift endorsement indicates “that she is thinking that maybe not all her fans are already registered,” and that in addition to first-time eligible voters there are those who’ve been eligible for a cycle or two who’ve never voted, “because they were apathetic or frustrated with our current political culture.”
The Harris endorsement also comes nearly a month earlier than her Biden one four years ago, which could allow for more opportunities for in-person volunteering, donations and engagement, according to Donovan and Hinck. Swift has Eras tour dates remaining in Florida, Indiana and Louisiana, and it will be interesting to see if pop and politics converge informally, in fan art and displays of voting intention, or through voter information tables, as happened with Vote for Change.
There already existed a “Swifties for Kamala” website and social media accounts providing information for voters, and Hinck said she expects “fans will take the official endorsement and run with it.”
She saw that while studying the impact of Supernatural actor Misha Collins’s endorsement of Biden in 2020, which came during the primaries when the veteran politician was struggling. While Supernatural and sci-fi fans agreed to disagree on the endorsement, most felt by the end of the cycle it was “a way for them to enter politics, a way to feel powerful, a way in which they felt efficacious,” Hincke said.
Some picked up on Collins’s enthusiasm for civic engagement by hosting YouTube livestreams during voter registration drives, she said. Hinck expects even more of those knockoff effects this time, given Swift’s popularity.
Vote.org clocked 337,826 visits to its site by 2 p.m. Wednesday from Swift’s custom link to the site, per a spokesperson for the U.S. Government Services Administration. Those aren’t official voter registrations, but the site points the way for Americans to engage electorally.
WATCH | Trump and Harris show their differences in tense presidential debate:
In their first presidential debate, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris sparred over abortion, foreign policy and immigration — highlighting the differences in their politics as well as personalities.
West Reading Tay
If U.S. elections were straight-up popularity contests, Democrats would have occupied the White House after seven of the last eight elections, instead of the actual five times.
The electoral college votes of about six to eight states are expected to be decisive. In Trump’s 2016 win and in his 2020 loss, the election came down to mere tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states.
Polarization, in addition to strongly held opinions for or against Trump forged over his three presidential runs, mean that the percentage of undecided voters in 2024 has been estimated as being in the single digits. Mobilizing voters, be they new or dormant ones, is expected to be critical.
Here, too, Swift could be a factor.
“I think it’s more important to keep in mind that from high school onward, she has primarily resided in Tennessee, but she was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania is a must-win state,” said Donovan.
Indeed, Swift was born in West Reading, a town of just over 4,000 at the time, in Berks County. According to all evidence so far, Pennsylvania is outpacing other states by a significant degree in terms of the amount money being poured in to try and influence the presidential contest and down-ballot races.
Hinck, whose work has occurred in Ohio and swing state Wisconsin, concurs.
“My sense doing this kind of research in mostly Midwestern states, is that fandom is powerful in small towns and big towns. Whether that fandom is Swift or football or something else, it does affect political actions.”
