Grammy winner Taylor Swift created a record-breaking surge in traffic to the nonpartisan, nonprofit website, Vote.org. All thanks to an Instagram story she posted on National Voter Registration Day, September 19th, 2023.
“Are you registered to vote yet? I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my US shows recently,” the post read. “I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year! Register to vote in less than 2 minutes at vote.org/NVRD.”
Vote.org says Swift’s 272 million followers flooded the website with 157,041 eligible voters visiting the site, and 35,252 new registrations. This spike in traffic made this the largest National Voter Registration Day since 2020. The website also saw a 72% increase in 18-year-olds registering compared to 2019, and a 115% increase compared to 2022.
“Time and time again young people are showing up and demonstrating they care about their rights and access to the ballot box,” CEO of Vote.org, Andrea Hailey said. “During the day on Tuesday we saw a 1226% jump in participation the hour after Taylor Swift posted. Our site was averaging 13,000 users every 30 minutes – a number that Taylor Swift would be proud of.”
But this isn’t the first time Swift has sent her legion of fans to the ballot box. In 2018 she did something similar when she posted on social media urging Swifties to register, as well as endorsing two Democratic candidates. Which in turn caused Vote.org to gain a sizable increase in registrations.
The music industry has a rather long history of using its influence with young fans to get them to the polling place. In 2004, Diddy aka Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs started the “Vote or Die” campain under his political service group Citizen Change. The movement specifically focused on getting celebrities to encourage young and marginalized groups to get out and vote. The initiative was apparently successful enough for Diddy to relaunch “Vote or Die” for the 2020 presidential election.
