How significant is Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala? How many of her fans are old enough to vote?

Taylor Swift has had a fairly startlingly long career at the top of the music industry. Someone born on the day her multi-platinum debut album came out will be (just) old enough to vote in the 2024 election. But that was a sleeper hit; she first became a household name in 2009 (so 15 years ago) at the VMA awards when, in response to her having won the fan vote for best music video by a female artist Kanye West jumped up on stage. But she already had a big enough fan base in 2009 to win a VMAs fan vote. And if her fans in 2009 were teenage girls then 15 years later they aren’t one now.

But the big problem with the 18–44 age group is voter turnout. In the 2020 Presidential Election over two thirds of eligible voters voted, but only 51% of 18–24 year olds and 60% of 25–34 year olds turned out to vote. Taylor Swift didn’t just endorse Kamala Harris (and give reasons that she’s angry about and her fans may share), she set up a link to register to vote - which drove over 400,000 people to the government voter registration website in less than a day. She also said that she finds voting early and will share information on how to vote early.

Her endorsement is pretty much expected (she’s a young artist known to be LGBT-friendly) even if her fanbase might be annoyed at the AI impersonation of her and at the Vance “childless cat lady” remarks (she signed her post “Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady”). But improving voter turnout among the 18–44s? That could potentially be very significant.

Musk's DOGE workers are now investigating Medicare and Medicaid. They want to eliminate fraud, but can they also be hurting poor Americans and senior citizens' benefits?

The idea that her fans are mostly teenage girls is a massively outdated one based on her first three albums. Back then she didn’t even drink, but that was well over ten years ago now. Recent polling on her fanbase by YouGov indicates that her fans are 48% male and over a third of American adults aged 18–44 are Taylor Swift fans. That on its own would be a huge demographic if that was all her endorsement meant.