Taylor Swift is currently one of the biggest stars in the country. She is still on her record-breaking “Eras” tour, ranks as the second-most-played artist on Spotify this year, and, in July, scored the biggest week of sales for an album this year with “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” She’s using that cultural clout to urge her fans, known as “Swifties,” to register to vote.
Swift posted an Instagram story on Tuesday, marking National Voter Registration Day.
“I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my US shows recently,” she wrote. “I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year!”
She went on to offer concrete advice on how: “Register to vote in less than 2 minutes at vote.org/nvrd.” As a result, Vote.org’s communications director tweeted, “our site was averaging 13,000 users every 30 minutes.”
This isn’t a first for Swift. In 2018, she was credited with a surge in young voter registrations after she endorsed two Tennessee Democrats and promoted voter registration. She called on fans to vote in 2020, and just this July, she went local with a post about the Nashville mayoral race.
The question is how much of a difference even arguably the biggest pop star in the country can make. Obviously, Swift’s powers are limited—she can’t propel a Democrat to a statewide win in Tennessee. But getting young people out to vote has historically been tough, and every little bit can help.
In 2020, young voter turnout was up substantially from 2016. It typically drops way off in midterm elections, but 2018 set a record for youth turnout, at 28%. Youth turnout wasn’t quite as high in 2022, at 23%, but that was still significantly higher than the 13% who voted in 2014—and in four states, young voter turnout was higher in 2022 than in 2018. Two of those states were the battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Democrats made important pickups.
Because, yes, young voters do lean Democratic. That may be particularly true in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, and all the ensuing state abortion bans: People ages 18 to 29 are the most likely to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
It’s unlikely that Taylor Swift is the magical answer to decades of struggles in getting young people out to vote. But in a tight election—and many of them are so tight these days—young people can make a difference. And having Swift promoting voter registration and reminding Swifties to follow through and vote is definitely a plus.