Will Taylor Swift’s Kamala Harris endorsement actually matter?

Taylor Swift, always noted for her flair for dramatic timing, finally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race Tuesday night. Moments after the first debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, Swift posted her endorsement to Instagram, with a picture of herself posing with her now almost-equally famous cat. Meanwhile, Harris walked off the stage at her post-debate party with Swift’s feminist anthem “The Man” blaring. The entire endorsement was a carefully choreographed move coming after nearly a year of speculation, disappointment, and paranoia from political onlookers. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift wrote, urging her followers to do their own research and make their own choices. She signed off with what appeared to be a jab at VP nominee Sen. JD Vance’s infamous “cat lady” sound bite: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.” [Media: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_wtAOKOW1z] In the post, Swift unambiguously states that she’s voting for Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz because of their support for such feminist issues as “LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body.” At the same time, she makes space for potentially millions of fans who might not feel the same way. “If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most,” Swift writes. “As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.” Her endorsement drew jubilation among some quarters, as well as vitriol in others. Elon Musk had perhaps the most bizarre and off-putting response. “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Musk wrote on X. Onlookers have been breathlessly speculating about whether and when Swift will weigh in on this election all year. In January, after Swift began her much-publicized romance with NFL star Travis Kelce, conservatives theorized that Swift was a deep-state psyop. The idea was that her relationship with Kelce was a ploy to juice her popularity so that her eventual endorsement of Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee, would be all the more impactful. The same month, the New York Times reported that the Biden campaign was actively courting Swift’s endorsement, and that she was their “biggest and most influential” target. “Fund-raising appeals from Ms. Swift could be worth millions of dollars for Mr. Biden,” the Times noted. Trump, predictably, was incensed at the very idea. “There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money,” he posted on Truth Social in February, apparently referring to his role in signing the Music Modernization Act. After Harris became the Democratic nominee in July, she received a slew of celebrity endorsements from the likes of Charli XCX, Megan Thee Stallion, and Cardi B. Even Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her song “Freedom” in campaign ads, a de facto endorsement from one of the most powerfully elusive figures in pop culture. Reading the tea leaves of a possible Swift endorsement became a fever-pitched and chaotic guessing game in the months following. In August, rumors flew over one of Swift’s Instagram posts, in which Swift was pictured on stage at one of her concerts next to the silhouette of a strong-shouldered woman. To some observers, it looked as though Swift had photoshopped Harris’s shadow into the frame as an easter egg to let the sharp-eyed know her endorsement would be forthcoming. She hadn’t: The woman was one of her backup dancers. Some Swift fans cautioned patience. On the occasions when Swift has made political endorsements in the past, she’s usually done so relatively late in the race. In 2016, she didn’t endorse at all. In 2018, she got politically involved for the first time, endorsing Democrats Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper for Congress on October 7, two days before the voter registration deadline in Tennessee. In 2020, Swift similarly endorsed Joe Biden on October 7. Expecting an endorsement in August, her fans said, was too early for her. Still, as the months wore on, there was a growing outcry among some of her fans. Trump shared a series of AI-generated images falsely claiming Swift had endorsed him, but Swift said nothing. Her new friend Brittany Mahomes went public with her support of Trump, but Swift publicly embraced her at the highly photographed US Open shortly thereafter. [Media: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_qsMcbyHeT/?igsh=N29hOXUwMTkxbDFs&img_index=1] The fervor with which people have speculated about what Swift would do is striking, considering that celebrity political endorsements appear to be a mixed bag with relatively narrow effects. As Li Zhou has reported for Vox, celebrities can be good at getting people to pay attention to a race, or at heightening excitement about a candidate that people are already interested in, but they’re not necessarily good at changing people’s minds across party lines. You might be more likely to tune into the DNC if you think Swift or Beyoncé is going to show up, but there’s little evidence that their presence could turn you from an undecided voter into a committed Harris supporter. At best, celebrity endorsements might convince some otherwise unenthusiastic people at the margins to turn out and vote. At worst, there’s some evidence that the plethora of celebrity endorsements for Hillary Clinton in 2016 hurt her rather than helped her, strengthening the sense that she was a candidate for the liberal elite. That’s the reason Swift said she decided not to endorse Clinton. “​Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement,” Swift told Vogue in 2019. “He was going around saying, I’m a man of the people. I’m for you. I care about you. I just knew I wasn’t going to help.” Swift’s previous political actions have generally followed the pattern you would expect from the data: good for overall political engagement, less good for any one political candidate. She’s great at getting people to register to vote. Last year, a single Instagram story from her led to a 23 percent increase in voter registration. In 2018, a similar Instagram post led to 65,000 new registrations in 24 hours. Swift seems to know her strength here. Tuesday’s Instagram post endorsing Harris included a reminder to her fans to make sure they’re registered to vote, and an Instagram story linked fans to vote.gov. Of course, even after Swift’s endorsement, Phil Bredesen handily lost his 2018 campaign for the Senate in Tennessee. Swift may have moved the needle for him, but not enough to get a Democratic senator elected in a red state. The 2024 presidential election is projected to be much closer. “Biden’s electoral vote majority was a function of fewer than 50,000 votes in three states four years ago,” pointed out the Washington Post in August. “Getting a small segment of the massive Taylor Swift fan base to vote that otherwise wouldn’t? Hard to dismiss the idea that it could tip the balance.” Still, given the mixed track record, it’s fair to ask why people are so worked up about Swift’s political endorsements. There are basically two factors at play behind this fascination. The first is her image. The second is her stature. Swift has played with pop feminism through much of her career. In 2014 she declared that she identified as a feminist and positioned her 1989 tour, girl squad and all, as a feminist act. When she was mocked at the Golden Globes, she declared the jokes anti-feminist. After her public downfall in 2016, Swift rehabilitated her image in part by leaning into politics. Her 2020 documentary Miss Americana features a scene in which Swift weeps while begging her father and management team to get on board with her endorsing Democrats for Congress. “I need to be on the right side of history!” she cries. Shortly after that encounter, she released her song “The Man,” in which she argues that she comes in for public criticism because of her gender. That led many of Swift’s fans to expect her to walk the walk. The price of starting so many sentences with “As a woman in this industry,” they argue, is that you also have to say something when the known sexual abuser who ended Roe v. Wade is running for president against a woman who’s campaigning on a platform of reproductive rights. Swift’s continued silence, even after Trump used AI to speak for her, had those fans worried. “Given … how much mileage Swift got in the past out of her decision to speak out on politics, the idea that she will remain silent would seem to make her past speaking out, at a more convenient moment, appear cynical,” wrote Daniel D’Addario for Variety earlier this week. “It’d be regrettable if her engagement with the world of politics were just another of her eras, and one from which she were willing to move on.” With this new endorsement, Swift can assure her fans she’s still got her feminist cred, even as she’s phrased it carefully to give her more Trump-leaning fans room for plausible deniability. She’s successfully beaten back charges of hypocrisy and bandwagon feminism, and her star can continue to shine. The bigger reason so many are so concerned with Swift’s endorsement, however, is her singular stature in the pop culture landscape. Taylor Swift has been a huge star for years, but with the success of the Eras tour, she’s ascended to a new level of superstardom and cultural saturation. Political onlookers seem to think Swift has become so powerful that there’s a chance her say-so might actually swing the needle in a meaningful direction. Swift probably won’t change the minds of many people, because no celebrity can do that. But celebrities are good at activating voters on the margins, and Swift’s reach is broad enough at this point that her impact there could make a real difference come November. Just the possibility that she might seems to be threatening to some on the right: see Musk’s response offering to “give [Swift] a child.” He’s ostensibly responding to Swift calling herself a “childless cat lady.” But there’s a crude implied threat in his offer, too: let me knock you up so you stop talking. In an election cycle laced with misogynistic rhetoric, Swift’s cautious, carefully phrased endorsement was enough to make her a target of threats from one of the richest men in the world. Musk’s post is a tell that even Swift’s most measured political speech can be a threat to a political movement arrayed against women having control of their bodies and voices — and Swift’s voice is much louder than most. Correction, September 12, 10:45 am: This story, originally published September 11, incorrectly dated a Washington Post article; it was from August 2024.