Mert & MarcusDo people care what celebrities have to say in terms of politics? If the celebrity is Taylor Swift, the answer is clearly yes.
Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC-TV reports that the day after Taylor took to Instagram to endorse Democratic candidates in her adopted home state of Tennessee, voter registrations in that state — and nationwide — increased significantly.
As KABC reports, Vote.org noted that on Monday, there had been more than 51,000 new voter registrations in the previous 24 hours, as well as a spike in website traffic. In Tennessee specifically, there were about 2,800 registrations in September; this month, that number’s increased to just over 3,500. Of those, 2,144 occurred in the last 36 hours.
KABC quotes Karen North, a professor of digital social media at USC Annenberg, as saying that Taylor’s post might actually end up having an impact on the midterm elections. “She laid it out there in a lot of words with a lot of passion, saying vote based on issues,” said North. “Take a look at the candidates and make sure that you agree with candidates, as opposed to look at the demographics of the candidates.”
North added that Taylor “could actually sway people — not even necessarily on their vote — but possibly just the get out the vote, the push to go show up at the polls and make a difference.”
As previously reported, Taylor endorsed Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives in Tennessee and reminded fans that the deadline to register to vote in the state is Tuesday, October 9. She said the voting record of Republican candidate, Marsha Blackburn, “appalls and terrifies me.”
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