Taylor Swift’s Call to Vote Sent Hundreds of Thousands to Registration Tools
Three organizations that provide clearinghouse voting resources had traffic spikes coinciding with Ms. Swift’s post urging her fans to cast a ballot.
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| Taylor Swift accepting the video of the year award for “Fortnight” during the MTV Video Music Awards, on Wednesday.Credit...Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated Press |
Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and her call for her fans to vote drove hundreds of thousands of people to voter registration resources.
Her Instagram post included a link to Vote.gov, a website run by two federal agencies: the General Services Administration and the Election Assistance Commission. According to a spokeswoman for the G.S.A., about 406,000 people clicked on the link within 24 hours of Ms. Swift's posting.
That link accounted for more than half of the roughly 727,000 visitors Vote.gov received from Tuesday to Wednesday. The remainder was likely driven by the debate itself. Last week, from Sept. 3-9, the site received an average of about 30,000 visitors per day, according to the agency.
Vote.gov is a clearinghouse directing prospective voters to their state’s registration website. Since people cannot register to vote directly on the site, it is not possible to determine how many of the people who clicked the link also registered.
Two other organizations that provide similar clearinghouse resources also had big spikes in traffic coinciding with Ms. Swift’s post.
Celina Stewart, the chief executive of the League of Women Voters, which runs Vote411.org, said that as of Thursday morning, the number of people using its voter registration tools had more than doubled since Tuesday — and the people who visited were on average younger than the site’s typical visitors.
On Monday, Ms. Stewart said, the age group that had the most visitors to Vote411.org was 55 to 65. On Wednesday and into Thursday morning, it was 18 to 24.
“Whenever a celebrity uses their platform to encourage civic participation, that’s a win for democracy,” she said. “We applaud Taylor Swift for encouraging Swifties and fans to research candidates and issues this election season.”
Vote.org, another prominent resource, saw a nearly sixfold increase in people using its tools for registering or verifying an existing registration from 9 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday — when the debate began — to midnight, a spokesman said. That number reflects both the debate itself and the influence of Ms. Swift’s post, which came around 11 p.m.
On Wednesday, Vote.org helped more than 27,000 people register, compared with 8,865 average over the previous eight days, and helped more than 80,000 verify existing registrations, well above the daily average of 16,152.
“Taylor Swift’s impact on voter engagement is undeniable,” Andrea Hailey, the chief executive of Vote.org, said in a statement. “The important thing to remember is that Taylor’s work serves as a model that everyone with a platform can use to encourage Americans to participate in civic engagement.”
Ms. Swift wrote in her post, which was made shortly after the debate ended, that she would be voting for Ms. Harris, but she urged her fans to register and cast a ballot regardless of whom they supported.
Maggie Astor covers politics for The New York Times, focusing on breaking news, policies, campaigns and how underrepresented or marginalized groups are affected by political systems.
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