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It was the Instagram endorsement read ‘round the world: Pop superstar Taylor Swift backs Kamala Harris for president. Swift’s post also directed her followers to register to vote.
Swift’s support for Harris and voter registration will likely have some impact, but not as much as some would hope. That said, Harris and the Democratic Party are struggling with young voters and voter registration, so they’ll take any help they can get.
Let’s start out with what we know about Swift’s post. More than 330,000 people were redirected to Vote.gov from Swift’s Instagram, as of 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to the General Services Administration, which runs the website. An examination of Google trends revealed a spike in searches for voter registration after Swift’s post, a Washington Post analysis found.
We know there was an increase in registrations when Swift made a similar post imploring people to register to vote in 2023. Voter registrations went up by 23% that day compared with the same time the year before. That equated to 35,252 voter registrations in total nationally.
These really aren’t large numbers. Let’s assume that all of the people who clicked on Swift’s Vote.gov link have registered to vote. That would amount to about 0.2% of the 2020 turnout. Of course, only a portion of those who clicked on the link will actually register and then actually turn out.
And the potential Swift bump comes as registered Republicans have been closing the gap with registered Democrats in several key states over the past few years. Take a look at the most recent data on voter registration reported by government officials in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – all battlegrounds that allow voters to register by party.
Republicans have widened the margin in Arizona and closed the gap with Democrats significantly in other states since September 2020 – picking up anywhere from from more than 60,000 active voters in Nevada to nearly 400,000 active voters in Pennsylvania.
The voter registration spikes we have seen historically from Swift endorsement drives would not be enough to make up these GOP gains.
Now Swift could help Harris among those already planning to vote. She sported a 52% favorable rating among likely voters in a Grinnell College/Selzer poll published earlier this year. Her unfavorable rating was just 32%. That makes for a net favorability rating of +20 points. A Fox News poll from last year showed the same thing.
While she may not be universally popular, she’s far more popular than most politicians. Harris and former President Donald Trump have net favorability ratings of closer to 0 points and -10 points, respectively.
Younger “Swifties” could also be helpful to Harris.
The vice president is currently struggling, relatively speaking, with younger voters. A recent average of national polls finds her winning voters under the age of 30 by 15 points. That’s better than President Joe Biden was doing when he dropped out of the race in July, but not overly so. Biden was up by 7 points.
Both Harris and Biden have done worse among young voters this year compared with where Biden was in September 2020. Back then, Biden held a 25-point lead among young voters. That edge would grow to 29 points by the final 2020 pre-election surveys.
Swift, on her own, won’t be able to eliminate that entire gap. Remember: She couldn’t translate her first big political endorsement (Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate in 2018) into success at the ballot box. Bredesen lost by double digits.
But there is no doubt that Swift is an asset to Harris and Democrats, even if it is just on the margins.
We’re talking about an election that is currently neck-in-neck in the national and battleground state polls. Getting a few voters over to the Democrats and Harris could just be enough.
