Does Taylor Swift's Endorsement Matter?
Maybe more than we think. Here's the facts.
We had a super fun debate night chat here on Substack. We are going to keep doing live chats around big events and keep the chat open for the entire election season. So many of you told me you wanted a safe space to express joy and fear and anxiety far away from the madness of social media. I loved every second of it.
This week the Internet lost its mind when the world’s biggest pop star dropped a bombshell of an endorsement right after a debate where the likely first female president of the United States eviscerated a man with a very fragile ego.
“I’m voting for [Harris] because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Taylor Swift wrote in an Instagram post minutes after the presidential debate ended on Tuesday. “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
When asked Wednesday morning about the global superstar endorsing the Democratic nominee, Trump told Fox News he prefers Swift’s close friend Brittany Mahomes over the singer.
“I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “She’s a big Trump fan. I was not a Taylor Swift fan.”
That’s a lie. In 2012 he called her terrific. Also, he only like Mahomes because she likes him back. Men.
But does this endorsement matter?
JD Vance doesn’t seem to think so.
"We admire Taylor Swift's music, but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of her or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans," Vance said Wednesday on "The Story."
But does anyone realllllly care what America’s creepy cousin has to say? And isn’t his running mate also a billionaire celebrity? Just saying….
I chatted about this on my new podcast which we just launched this week with two episodes (first about the debate and second about IVF). It’s called We’ve Got Issues and I’ll be posting the audio and video of the first episode below for paid subscribers.
You can also subscribe here.
One thing I do want to note is that the Harris campaign definitely knew this was coming because within minutes of the endorsement Taylor inspired bracelets appeared on the campaign website.
Want one? Sorry. They’re already sold out.
According to a Harvard study, celebrity endorsements do actually matter. Economists from University of Maryland estimated that Oprah’s endorsement of Obama in 2008 gave him a boost of 1 million votes in the primary. When Swift posted on IG encouraging her followers to register in 2018, it was vote.org’s largest day of new voter registration in history. So far she’s directed 400,000 visits to vote.org. Political strategist Tom Bonier said there was a "400% or 500% increase" in voter registration. Last year, a single Instagram story from her led to a 23 percent increase in voter registration. In 2018, a similar Instagram post led to 65,000 new registrations in 24 hours.
As a reminder, the 2000 election was decided by 537 votes. A couple hundred voter registrations in Pennsylvania could make all of the difference for the Presidential race this year. (That’s not even getting into down ballot races, which are likewise sometimes decided on smaller margins than you think!)
Swifties for Kamala reported this week that they have amassed 3,500 volunteers and mobilized 90k people to check their voter registration. They have their own Ripple page - imagine the impact of each one of those 3.5k volunteers talking to 5 people outside of the political echo chambers. (That’s 17.5k people!)
The thing about this election is that it’s going to be won on the margins, largely down to 6% of voters in 6 states. So the question is really twofold (1) how does Taylor help overall vibes, and (2) how does Taylor bump the 6%?
In August I saw a presentation from the Harris-Walz team in which they said they are focused on a 5 part coalition to deliver the vote this year. Those groups are: Black voters, AANHPI voters, women voters, young voters and Latino voters.
When we are looking at the mechanics of *actually winning* a campaign, what’s relevant is getting out the vote within the particular segments of a population who will vote for your candidate. “In Florida, new voter registrations in the week after Biden withdrew increased by 12% over the same week in 2020. Yet registrations among young Black women increased by 141%.” Those are women who are registering to vote KH.
So what’s my analysis of these numbers? Subscribe to find out!