Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris: Will it make a difference?

Soon after Kamala Harris and Donald Trump left the Philadelphia stage following the United States presidential debate, musician Taylor Swift threw her support behind Harris.

Swift posted a picture of herself and her pet cat on Tuesday night with a lengthy caption explaining why she will be voting for Democrat Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.

The endorsement came after months of fevered speculation over whether and when Swift, arguably the biggest name in the world of music, would publicly pick a candidate in the US election.

But could Swift’s support really make a difference and bring more votes to Harris? Here’s more about the role of celebrity endorsements in US elections:

A Swift endorsement
In the caption of her Instagram post on Tuesday, Swift began by saying she watched the debate, urging her 284 million followers to do their research on the key issues and candidates before the November 5 election. “As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies,” she wrote.

She then expressed fears around the misuse of artificial intelligence to spread misinformation. In August, Trump, on his online platform Truth Social, posted AI-generated images of Swift and her fans appearing to endorse Trump. Some of these AI deep fakes showed her fans wearing T-shirts with the text “Swifties for Trump”.

These images caused Swift to conclude she needs to “be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter”, she continued in her caption before declaring that she will be voting for Harris and Walz. She added that she was heartened by Harris’s choice of Walz as her vice presidential candidate because of his long advocacy for “IVF and a woman’s right to her own body”.

She signed off as “Childless Cat Lady”, a wry nod to Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who had previously used the phrase to describe emerging leaders within the Democratic Party, including Harris.

While some polls show that people say they are not influenced by celebrity endorsements, nonprofits and other organisations have reported increased voter participation after celebrities weigh in on a political race, according to a study by Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government that was published in August.

An example of this is Swift herself. In September 2023, she sent out a post urging her followers to register themselves as voters on Vote.org. After this, the nonpartisan, nonprofit organisation recorded more than 35,000 voter registrations. While it was unclear how many of these registrations came from Swift fans, Vote.org reported a 1,226 percent increase in participation in the hour after Swift’s post.

According to the Harvard study, directing fans to register as voters is a common call to action among celebrities. In 2020, YouTube vlogger David Dobrik and, in 2022, model and socialite Hailey Bieber ran online campaigns urging their followers to verify their voter registration status. Both campaigns were successful.

A celebrity endorsement “won’t impact voters who already have strong partisan allegiances, and most voters are in this category”, Richard T Longoria, an associate professor of US government and politics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said.

Longoria, who specialises in celebrity politics and public opinion, added that a small segment of voters can be influenced by such endorsements. “People that are disengaged from the political process or are discovering political issues for the first time can be influenced,” he said.

“In a close election, that could mean the difference between winning and losing,” Longoria said.

But in terms of celebrity endorsements impacting voter turnout for specific candidates, no modern example comes close to the advantage Barack Obama gleaned from the support he won from the queen of talk shows: Oprah Winfrey