Taylor Swift’s support for Kamala Harris may have boosted the Democratic vice-president’s hopes of attracting young voters, but the question remains: will the celebrity endorsement make a difference on election day?
Locked in a tight White House race, both Harris and her rival, Republican former president Donald Trump, are doing all they can to lure voters on November 5th and in early voting starting next week.
For his part, Trump dismissed Swift’s endorsement of Harris on Tuesday night, saying he was “not a Taylor fan”.
With voter registrations down among young people in a country where 18 is the voting age, the first challenge for either campaign may be getting them to register to vote at all.
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Young voters played a decisive role in Democratic president Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020. Biden captured about 61 per cent of the vote to Trump’s 36 per cent of voters aged 18-29, according to data from Tufts University.
A July 2024 analysis by the university’s youth civic engagement group, Circle, found that voter registrations have dropped significantly since then in 36 states among those aged 18-29. Harris launched her campaign on July 21st after Biden withdrew.
“Registering youths remains a major task in the months ahead,” the analysis said.
Enter Swift, an artist so successful she equalled hip-hop star Beyoncé's record of 30 lifetime awards at the MTV Video Music Awards on Wednesday night. A 2023 Morning Consult poll found that 55 per cent of self-described Swift fans were Democrats and 45 per cent were millennials aged 28-43.
“I'm voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift wrote on Tuesday to her 284 million Instagram followers, urging them to register to vote and make their own choice.
Her post drew 10.4 million likes. The vote.gov website received 405,999 visitors in the 24 hours after Swift shared a custom URL with followers, a US government spokesperson said.
Harris aides say they would love for Swift to actively campaign, such as by appearing at a rally in her native Pennsylvania, a battleground state that could well decide the election.
But the campaign itself was not involved in Swift's decision to back Harris.
The vice-president’s aides said they learned of Swift’s support only when the entertainer (34) posted it on Instagram minutes after the vice-president stepped off the debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.
What difference does a celebrity endorsement make? A 2008 Northwestern University report found Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement added a million votes to Barack Obama’s tally. But a 2010 North Carolina State University report found celebrity endorsements by George Clooney and Angelina Jolie did little to move the political needle.
While some polling shows that people claim they aren’t influenced by celebrity voices when it comes to politics, more rigorous evidence indicates that these voices are incredibly powerful
— Ashley Spillane in a study published by Harvard’s Kennedy School
Margaretha Bentley, a professor at Arizona State University whose class studies Swift’s social importance, is unsure whether the pop singer will have an impact. She asked her students earlier this year whether a Swift endorsement would matter.
Some said they would follow Swift’s lead and others said it would prompt them to do more research. “Some students told me they listen to celebrities when it comes to, like, what coffee they would drink, not politics,” Bentley said.
A Swift fan at the VMA awards on Wednesday, Morgan Paris, said: “It's good that she said what she feels. And I mean, I feel like her politics and her music are two separate things, so you can't really combine them.”
Ashley Spillane wrote in a study published last month by Harvard’s Kennedy School that nonprofits found “higher rates of online voter registration or poll worker sign-ups when a celebrity promotes these calls to action”.
“While some polling shows that people claim they aren’t influenced by celebrity voices when it comes to politics, more rigorous evidence indicates that these voices are incredibly powerful,” Spillane said.
The Harris campaign and their supporters are building on the endorsement, announcing pre-orders for its latest campaign wear: Swift fan-inspired friendship bracelets.
The progressive group MoveOn.org is selling Swift T-shirts that play on Swift’s ongoing Eras concert tour. The shirt, reading “In My Voting Era,” is the fastest-selling item the group has sold this year, spokeswoman Britt Jacovich said.
Voters of Tomorrow, which seeks to boost the youth vote, is teaming up with the informal group “Swifties for Harris” on a phone bank on Saturday to target college students in Georgia and Wisconsin, both battleground states.
Swift “is one of the most influential people of our generation, and we’re definitely excited to see how we can take her message and turn that into more political action and get more people involved,” said Jessica Siles, a spokeswoman for Voters of Tomorrow.