VOTING BECAUSE TAYLOR SWIFT SAID SO?
It’s unclear how influential Swift is in terms of shifting the political needle. On one hand, the morale enhance of her endorsement is plain.
Nonetheless, a nationwide ballot by Suffolk College in Might discovered {that a} Taylor Swift endorsement wouldn’t affect the vote selection of most respondents. The truth that Phil Bredesen misplaced his 2018 Senate marketing campaign additionally factors to the bounds of her potential to affect election outcomes.
But, even when she can’t change the minds of polarised voters, she may persuade her younger, typically liberal followers to register to vote. When Swift urged her followers to register to vote early in 2018, 65,000 folks answered her name inside 24 hours. About 35,000 folks registered following an identical plea in 2023.
This 12 months, she used each her Harris endorsement put up and her acceptance speech on the MTV Video Music Awards to encourage all her eligible followers to vote in November. Observers are already reporting a 400 to 500 per cent enhance in voter registration since her announcement, or between 9,000 to 10,000 folks per hour. If she takes bolder steps, reminiscent of urging her followers to get their mother and father to vote for Harris, the impact is likely to be much more pronounced.
Swift’s endorsement won’t assure Harris’ victory, particularly given how fickle youth voter turnout may be. Nonetheless, in a race that’s anticipated to be determined by lower than 50,000 votes throughout a handful of essential swing states, each vote counts. The potential of a handful of motivated, liberal first-time voters is simply too necessary to only shake it off.
Kevin Chen is an Affiliate Analysis Fellow with the US Programme on the S Rajaratnam Faculty of Worldwide Research (RSIS), Nanyang Technological College (NTU), Singapore.
