Taylor Swift's Support for Kamala Harris Sparks Massive Surge in Voter Registrations
2min read American singer Taylor Swift has officially announced her support for U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, prompting hundreds of thousands of users to flood the government's voting website, highlighting the superstar's immense influence.
According to media reports, a spokesperson for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) said that a post by Swift on Instagram endorsing Harris led to over 330,000 visitors accessing the Vote.gov website.
Vote.gov is a federal government voting registration website operated by the General Services Administration. The site directs voters to their respective states and territories for voter registration and provides answers to frequently asked questions.
On Tuesday evening, just minutes after the first debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, Swift announced her support for Harris. She stated that she would vote for Harris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them, and believes the country should be led by calm and not chaos.
As a 14-time Grammy Award winner, Swift has 283 million Instagram followers.
In her Instagram post, Swift directed her fans to the vote.gov website and encouraged them to do their own research and register to vote in advance.
As of 2:00 PM on Wednesday, Swift's custom URL link to Vote.gov brought a huge influx of visitors to the site, with 337,826 visitors accessing Vote.gov.
This is not the first time Swift has driven a surge in visits to vote.gov. Last year, Swift posted a similar link to the vote.gov website to inspire her fans to register to vote. Reports indicate that within an hour of Swift's 2023 post, the website's traffic increased by 1,226%.
Swift's Endorsement of Harris Angered Trump And His Team
Trump said in a media interview on Wednesday morning that Swift might pay the price for it in the marketplace.
Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, downplayed the impact of Swift's support for Harris.
We admire Taylor Swift's music, but I don't think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of hers 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 in a media interview on Wednesday.
In August of this year, when AI-generated fake photos of Taylor Swift supporting Trump circulated on social media, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, I accept.
On Tuesday, Swift refuted the circulating fake photos online and said that her support for Harris was partly in response to those AI-generated images. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter, she said.Swift supported the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections and the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020. She regrets not publicly expressing her support in the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump won the White House.