‘The Swift Effect’: Political Data Expert Blown Away By ‘Massive’ Spike of Voter Registrations Following Taylor Swift Endorsement

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Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, and ever since, hundreds of thousands have looked into how to register to vote. One expert dubbed this the “Swift Effect.”

Tom Bonier , a senior advisor at data firm TargetSmart, has been tracking the numbers since Swift’s endorsement, and he told CBS News : “It’s really unlike anything I’ve seen.” He cited a “400 percent or 500 percent increase” in voter registration since Tuesday night when Swift dropped her endorsement immediately following the ABC News presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump :

[T]he question of how much of an impact will she have beyond just the excitement, you know, the likes on Instagram, will it translate into voter registration? So, we can see some of the back end data, in terms of the data that is coming in, hitting off the voter file that we build. And what we saw was this really massive increase. We’re calling it the “Swift Effect” now because it’s really unlike anything I’ve seen. We are seeing a 400 or 500 percent increase in people coming and trying to register to vote immediately following the debate and in that period after Taylor Swift posted on Instagram. And what’s really remarkable about that is usually you’ll see these increases and they kind of fade away. In this case, we’ve seen it continue through the last two days into today.

Bonier also said that Swift’s call to register to vote during Wednesday’s MTV Video Music Awards elicited an additional influx: “[W]e’re seeing this continued spike of 4 or 5 times what you would regularly see. So we’re talking about somewhere in neighborhood, 9,000 to 10,000 people per hour just hitting our system.”

But will it translate to actual votes? Bonier had data on that as well:

[W]e actually have statistics going back to 2020. We can see people who registered to vote this close to the election. Over 80 percent of those new registrants actually turned out in the election. So it’s safe to say that not only are these voters who are registering are a big deal, but it’s likely that they’re going to come out on Election Day or before Election Day and the early voting.

Swift’s endorsement included a link to the nonpartisan vote.gov, and in the hours following her post, the site saw nearly 338,000 visitors, a number that jumped to over 400,000 by the end of Wednesday. The Harris campaign jumped at the opportunity to appeal to Swift’s fan base, offering Harris-Walz friendship bracelets (like those made famous by Swift and her Eras Tour) and a slate of Swift-themed digital ads both online and on billboards in New York City’s Times Square and in Las Vegas. Deadline noted that Swift has not publicly agreed to campaign for Harris.