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Global superstar Taylor Swift on Tuesday announced her support for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in a highly anticipated endorsement that could energize millions of so-called Swifties.
The “Fortnight” singer didn’t endorse President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race, but she also didn’t endorse the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 until about a month before the election.
Swift’s reach is arguably unmatched, with some contending she’s now the most famous person in the world amid her record-breaking Eras Tour. She has more than 280 million Instagram followers, far surpassing Harris’ 17 million and Donald Trump’s 26 million.
But do those metrics translate into actual political influence? It’s a subject scholars and pundits have debated for years.
According to a PolitiFact article published in February, it would be “misguided to assume that Swift’s potential involvement in the race would be a magic bullet with guaranteed results.” The article continued:
Experts say it often takes more than a single message or action for celebrity endorsements to move the needle in elections. And younger people could be particularly hard to sway because they consistently chalk up the lowest turnout rates at the polls. An endorsement would draw attention, but her fans already lean left.
As my colleague Ja’han Jones wrote for The ReidOut Blog in May, some celebrity endorsements, including one from Swift, haven’t meaningfully affected outcomes in recent years. Jones wrote:
Beyoncé endorsed Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, in her home state of Texas in 2018 against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. And that same year Taylor Swift endorsed Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen’s effort to oust Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Both O’Rourke and Bredesen lost, and the celebrity endorsements seemed hardly to have moved the needle.
So the power of her endorsement may not lie in flipping Trump supporters or wooing independents as much as it does in her ability to engage and turn out voters generally. Vote.org said it saw a 1,226% jump in participation in the hour after Swift’s September 2023 Instagram post encouraging her followers to register to vote, NPR reported.
“Many Republicans correctly view Taylor as an influential force,” MSNBC’s Ari Melber told his viewers in January. “Her impact goes from culture and music to a wider resurgent feminism to civic engagement. It could shape turnout.”
Regardless of whether Swift’s endorsement delivers massive results for the Harris-Walz ticket, it’s one the Biden campaign reportedly fought hard to win.
As The New York Times reported in January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom — then a top surrogate for the Biden campaign — had practically begged the pop icon to speak out in support of the president’s re-election bid.
“Taylor Swift stands tall and unique,” Newsom, who endorsed Harris after Biden withdrew, told reporters in September 2023. “What she was able to accomplish just in getting young people activated to consider that they have a voice and that they should have a choice in the next election, I think, is profoundly powerful.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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