Taylor Swift Boosts Voter Registration After Endorsing Kamala Harris
Following Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris last Tuesday, the singer has driven record-breaking traffic to a voter registration site.
Swift’s Instagram post urging fans to register led to record-breaking traffic on Vote.gov after she shared a link in her Instagram story. Swift’s post brought over 405,999 visitors to the site directly from her Instagram, according to a spokesperson from the General Services Administration, which manages the site, as reported by Variety.
Following Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris, there has been a "400% or 500% increase" in voter registration — between 9,000-10,000 people per hour, according to data firm TargetSmart.
"It's really unlike anything I've seen," says TargetSmart senior adviser Tom Bonier. pic.twitter.com/4wC4ejdfaX— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 12, 2024
Her post generated more than ten times the usual traffic the site typically receives.
“That’s more than 10 times the traffic generated over a recent one-week period: From Sept. 3-9, the site received about 30,000 visitors per day. The Swift-fueled traffic bump also represented more than half of all visitors to Vote.gov between Sept. 10 and 11 (726,523 visitors total),” the GSA spokesperson stated.
The singer’s post not only drove link clicks but also led to a significant increase in voter registrations.
“According to the GSA on Sept. 11 there were more than 27,000 new registrations via Vote.gov (as well as more than 80,000 people who verified their registration status). Vote.gov does not allow people to register to vote; rather, the site directs U.S. residents to their state election websites for state-specific voting information and they must register directly with their state,” the spokesperson continued.
Tom Bonier, senior adviser at the data firm TargetSmart, which tracks voter registration, mentioned he’s never witnessed anything like this before.
“We’re calling it the Swift effect, because it’s really unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We’re seeing a 400 or 500 percent increase in people coming in and trying to register to vote immediately following the debate and in that period after Taylor Swift posted on Instagram,” the advisor told CBS News.
“What’s really remarkable about this is that usually you’ll see these kinds of increases and they’ll kind of fade away, in this case we’ve seen this trend continue through the last two days into today,” he continued.
Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz urged voters to take Swift’s advice.
Tim Walz giving a life hack:
surround yourself with smart women and listen to them and you’ll do just fine. That includes my fellow cat owner Taylor Swift! It’s really great to have all of these women help us beat the smallest man in the world Donald Trump!pic.twitter.com/2MzBY4tAmr— Taylor Throwbacks (@ThrowbackTaylor) September 14, 2024
For information on how to register to vote in the upcoming election, click here.
