On her Instagram pages, Taylor Swift has signed off as a “childless cat lady” in taking the mickey out of J.D. Vance who denigrated both independent ladies living with cats and the cats themselves when he described them as being unhappy. There was an avalanche of criticism and he’s not recovered despite backtracking considerably as has Trump in supporting him.
But Taylor Swift has the greatest number of followers on the entire social media internet, at 284 million in following her on Instagram. She did her research on the presidential election and believes that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be much better for America than Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. For me that’s because Harris is a much better person. You can see it in her face I would say.
Kamala supports animal welfare and has been described as an “animal champion”. She supports the LGBTQ plus movement and IVF and abortion and women’s rights in general. Trump is a misogynist and has done his best to attack women in my view. I thought she did great in standing up to Donald Trump in the presidential election debate. It must have been intimidating for her but almost 70% of Americans who took part in a poll say that she won the debate.
Trump demonstrated poor decision-making during the debate by going down the route of ranting and raving about Haitian migrants killing and eating pet cats, pet dogs and ducks despite the story being unverified. It was and is an extreme social media viral rumour.
On this story, Viles Dorsainvil, president of Springfield’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center, told NBC News: “It’s just bigotry, discrimination and racism. There is a group of people who have been fabricating some news just to denigrate Haitians.”
I believe you will find that an investigation about this concludes that the allegations were false and were made by local people with an axe to grind, an agenda to follow which included denigrating Haitians because they are allegedly racist and don’t like migrants in their community.
But the point here that I would like to make is that Taylor Swift has enough followers on Instagram to potentially slightly tilt the presidential election vote towards Kamala Harris. She can at least dent the number of supporters voting for Trump. If 5% of her followers are influenced by her voting and vote for Harris that would be 14.2 million votes for Harris. If half of them change affiliations from Trump to Harris it means Trump loses 7.1 million votes.
There are currently 336 million American citizens. Obviously not every Taylor Swift follower will follow her and vote for Kamala Harris but if she’s requesting and suggesting that they follow her vote she might expect upwards of 14 million American citizens to vote some of whom might have changed their mind and switched from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris.
Taylor Swift has been vocal about her political endorsements and encouraged her followers to vote. Of course, it’s important to note that not all followers necessarily vote in any case and their votes are not guaranteed to align with her endorsements. But I’m going to say that it is plausible to suggest that with such a massive following she can have at least a minor influence over the result.
And I like the fact that she describes herself as a childless cat lady when signing off her Instagram post. She is brave enough to say this and in a subtle it is a clever way to strike back at J.D. Vance’s misogynistic remarks. Her Instagram post is embedded below.
Vote.org’s CEO, Andrea Hailey, told the Telegraph newspaper that Swift’s impact on voter engagement was “undeniable.” According to Andrea Hailey, people under 35, who are statistically more likely to vote Democrat, have accounted for 79 per cent of the more than one million new voters that have registered in this election cycle.
Another political commentator, James Johnson, who is a political adviser and pollster based in New York said that: “Taylor Swift is clearly the biggest endorsement you could get from a celebrity. It won’t have an immediate effect [her vocal support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz] but I suspect if they [Harris’ campaign] can use that to mobilise younger people to vote, it could sway the election in that way.”
I’m told that when Taylor Swift was a young up-and-coming country music star she was told to keep well out of politics. She said that “Every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.'”
She regrets not supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 particularly as many of her fans had urged her to do so. She said that she “felt completely useless. And maybe even a hindrance”, in 2019. But had she supported Hillary Clinton at the time it could have changed the course of history according to The Telegraph newspaper.
In the Hillary Clinton scenario, a research Centre found that 58% of 18–29-year-old people voted for Clinton in 2016 and an analysis suggested that she would have received 1.9 million more votes had every single young person who had registered to vote had actually voted. Clearly the young person element of that analysis is very important because most of Taylor Swift’s fans are young people. It seems they do tend to vote Democrat.
My research indicates that a large portion of Taylor Swift’s Instagram followers are likely to be younger with a significant representation from Millennials i.e. those born between 1981 and 1996 and Gen Z people born between 1997 and 2012. Taylor Swift has maintained a strong connection with these groups over the years. And her fan base tends to be female although there is a notable male following.
My research also indicates that younger Americans particularly those in the above-mentioned groups tend to vote for Democratic candidates at higher rates compared to older age groups. Various factors contribute to this trend including generational differences in views on social issues such as climate change, LGBTQ plus rights, racial justice and health care.
Polling and voting data show that voters under the age of 30 leaned heavily towards democratic candidates during the 2020 presidential election. Although of course there are nuances based on factors like race, education and geography which can influence how different subgroups of young voters align politically.
The latest news is a reaction to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris by J.D. Vance. He appeared on Fox News to say that Taylor Swift is “disconnected” from American society. He added: “We admire Taylor Swift’s music, but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like music or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”
In response to J.D. Vance’s criticism of Taylor Swift, Whoopi Goldberg threw her hat into the ring and told J.D. Vance to shut up! She apologised later apparently but she’s made her point. She also made the point that Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is freaking out Trump and J.D. Vance.
