Study shows Taylor Swift's endorsement may turn off voters Harris needs
Just an hour after the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump concluded, Swift's endorsement of Harris went viral on Instagram.
The pop star has only recently waded into politics. Sometimes, her activism looks less partisan, as when her Instagram post led over 30,000 people to register to vote. At other times, her liberal leanings are on full display.
For example, she came out in support of two Tennessee Democratic candidates in 2018, and then for Joe Biden in 2020. Some Democratic-leaning Swifties were disappointed when she was a no-show at this year’s Democratic National Convention, especially because of her public statements in favor of liberal politics and abortion rights and her well-known distaste for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
However, when Harris outperformed Trump on the national debate stage just weeks after Biden's inability to do the same, Swift's endorsement seemed as inevitable as her TIME 2023 Person of the Year award.
The post-mortem talking heads pronounced Swift’s support as a significant moment, predicting that an army of Swifties would dig deep into politics, register, and cast ballots for Harris.
Historically, however, most candidates Swift has endorsed did not soar to victory. Thus, we have a blank space about whether Swift’s partisan plugs pack any additional punch. Will Taylor Swift's Instagram post blast Harris to the presidency? Or will this be the end of a cruel summer for another unsuccessful Swift endorsement?
To answer these questions, we conducted a national survey of over 1,000 people with an embedded experiment fielded from Aug. 19 to 27, weeks before Swift endorsed Harris.
In our experiment, we asked respondents several questions about their love for Swift — how often they listen to her music, whether they feel connected to her, among other related topics — and combined those answers to differentiate the Swifties from the rest. All respondents — fans and non-fans — were exposed to pictures of Taylor Swift asking them to vote.
About 500 saw an image of Swift making a nonpartisan appeal to vote in the upcoming election. The other 500 were shown the same image of Swift, but this time Swift encouraged participants to vote for Democrats.
After analyzing the data, we discovered that Swift's endorsement most powerfully affected undecided Swifties, but not the way you might expect.
When shown the picture of Swift encouraging people to vote, they reported a high likelihood of heading to the polls — about 0.71 on our 0-1 scale, with zero meaning that they were not interested and 1 meaning that they would definitely vote. This finding is consistent with Swift’s real-life efforts to mobilize voters to register. However, when undecided Swifties saw a picture of Swift encouraging them to vote for Democrats, their intent to vote actually declined, dropping to 0.40.
In short, in an election with tight margins, where campaigns need to mobilize their supporters, Swift’s endorsement of Harris may actually convince some undecided voters to stay home.
It is important to note that only Swifties responded in a significant way to our experiment, with the effect varying depending on their own political leanings.
Not surprisingly, “Trumpy” Swifties shrugged at Swift’s partisan endorsement. Just as celebrities are unlikely to persuade audiences to change their minds on wedge issues such as abortion, the death penalty, or gun control, it makes sense that voters who have already made up their minds to vote for Trump are unlikely to change their minds because of Swift’s encouragement.
Likewise, Swifties who were planning to vote for Harris are already locked in. Our respondents were not any more enthusiastic about the election, any more interested in learning about voting or the Democratic Party, any more likely to show up at the polls, or any more likely to vote for Democratic candidates.
Consider Swifties for Kamala, an organization that started its organizing efforts in July, long before Swift declared her intentions. Swift’s endorsement certainly would not make this group any less likely to vote or participate at their current level.
In a broader context, these findings are not entirely surprising. Most studies examining the nexus between politics and entertainment offer mixed conclusions about celebrities’ influence on political attitudes.
On the one hand, research finds that celebrity messages matter within certain contexts. Celebrities can spotlight certain issues more immediately and to larger audiences than most politicians can muster. On the other hand, most Americans claim they do not turn to celebrities for political information.
People also generally feel bad blood about mixing politics, which involves sober and sometimes unpleasant topics, with entertainment, which is inherently enjoyable and meant to amuse.
Swift has broken album and concert records, inspired cat-lovers and brought countless new fans to Arrowhead Stadium. But as Swift herself has put it, "haters gonna hate."
Partisanship and independents’ distaste of politicking will likely prove too hard for them to just ‘shake it off.’
Allyson Shortle is an associate professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. Brooklyn Walker is an instructor of political science at Hutchinson Community College. Mark Harvey is an associate professor and director of graduate programs at the University of Saint Mary.