A poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek found that 18% of voters are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a candidate endorsed by pop singer Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift has been essentially dedicated to music since she was 14, though she did graduate from high school in three years. There is nothing she has to offer in trenchant political commentary besides celebrity, and to a large number of Americans, as we already know, that’s enough.
So naturally, as the buzz was in Washington, D.C. today, the Biden campaign is working hard to get Swift to endorse Joe, if possible at the Super Bowl.
It is estimated that 8 million new voters will enter the ranks of the US electorate this year, making a total of 41 million Gen Z voters. This is also a group that surveys show has a low opinion of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free enterprise and the United States generally, so maybe they don’t even need Swift’s OK to vote Democratic. My guess, and maybe I’m whistling past the metaphorical graveyard, is that most of that 18% may be more likely to vote if Taylor tells them who to vote for, but the majority of them won’t be engaged enough to vote anyway.
If the election is going to turn on somethings as trivial and meaningless as celebrity endorsements, its not even worth worrying about. Those idiots will deserve what they get, and so will their elders, for letting society and the culture get that stupid.
Ethics Alarms 
That’s all we need, an explicitly political Super bowl. Then again, with all the black lives matter stuff it was pretty much already there.
I hope she is savvy enough not to endorse anyone.
I think some of the cynicism around her is that she encourages young people to register to vote and they have done so in response to that. The Democrats simply presume that she would vote for Biden and hence would encourage others to do so. They should not be so certain that they know which candidate she likes.
-Jut
Forget the endorsement stuff–think big: Taylor Swift for President!
That scares me.
Talk about Michelle Obama, Oprah and Tucker Carlson is only slightly less concerning.
I keep thinking of John Wayne’s response when George Wallace invited him to be his running mate in 1968. His first response was “Bullshit!” and his formal one was to thank Wallace but to say that he knew the difference between playing a leader on film and being one—and that he was a Republican who would back Richard Nixon.
“This is also a group that surveys show has a low opinion of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free enterprise and the United States generally, so maybe they don’t even need Swift’s OK to vote Democratic. ”
The irony is that Swift is the epitome of free enterprise and capitalism. Perhaps we should change the iconography of being unseemly rich from a fat little man in a top hat to a leggy piece of eye candy in colorful spandex.
So, is Taylor Swift a psyop? I mean, she isn’t new to the music scene. Her music isn’t any better. Suddenly, though, she got massive amounts of media attention. When she was named ‘Man of the Year’, I wondered what was going on. I mean, we have had pop sensations before, but they were all new sensations. I can’t remember someone established who just went from 50 to 1000 overnight for no apparent reason. She didn’t have a change in her music, she didn’t star in a blockbuster movie, she is just doing the same old stuff she had been doing for years.
I think her becoming the “du jour” of Travis Kelce has thrust her back into the limelight. Her lipstick is as red as the Chiefs’ helmets, so there is that. She’s always been a pretty clever songwriter and a modestly good actress – which makes her better than Natalie Portman any day – but her singing is just ok. Her schtick seems to be writing songs that allude to her various broken relationships, which probably appeals to younger kids. I’ll be super interested to see what comes out when she and Travis hit the skids.
My recommendation for the title of her first post-Kelce album?…”Leaving the Traylor Park for Good”
It is kind of the other way around — Kelce is Swift’s latest ‘du jour’.
It’s not often that an NFL star is dating someone even more famous and richer than he is — but how many Americans know who Travis Kelce is? Far more people know (and are fans of) Taylor Swift.
Well, no she didn’t star in a blockbuster movie — she starred in a blockbuster music tour. I don’t recall just now how many tickets she sold in her tour last year, but the number 50 million comes to mind. In any case it was tens of millions of tickets, her fans broke the online ticket selling app. That is the reason.
And she’s a great singer and showman. And she’s in a relationship with an NFL star who, as it happens is going to be in the Super Bowl a couple weeks from now.
I’ve already seen the bonkers conspiracy theory raised in several right-ish places that the Super Bowl and play-offs gave been fixed to ensure Taylor Swift in the brightest spotlight possible when she endorses Biden. Poe’s Law.
But before it came out, I was wondering “What is going on here?” with respect to her sudden and unexplainable popularity. The conspiracy theory was just a possible explanation. It doesn’t hurt that the military was actually discussing doing this shortly before it happened.
I’m always skeptical of any poll that shows ~20% support for some outrageous proposition. It seems like any time you put together a poll with at least one off-the-wall option, you can get around 20% of people to choose it, yet it’s not as if every fifth person you meet in daily life is stone-cold nuts. It seems to be more a combination of people not really paying attention to the survey, plus the people who just want to mess with survey takers, with the real hardcore crazies being a small minority of the total.
Her meticulously micro-managed image being what it is, it’ll be telling when we see how far out her handlers allow her to stick her neck.
PWS
To the point of the OP, I have never understood the importance that people give to the opinions of celebrities…really, about anything, but especially politics. Celebrity endorsements mean nothing, whether it’s recommending a car with “rich Corinthian leather”, or pushing an after-shave because “confidence is very sexy, don’t you think?”, or pimping a Presidential candidate.
Don’t normal, everyday people realize that companies are just preying on the popularity of a celebrity at the moment while simultaneously preying on the gullibility of its target audience? That company believes normal, everyday people are stupid enough to believe the word of a celebrity. Do we really think a celebrity – who makes like ten million dollars a week – actually uses the product he/she advertises?
Taylor Swift flies around in her own twelve-passenger, forty-million-dollar jet…and it’s likely not the only one she owns. Do people really think she lives in anything like my world? She doesn’t have to worry about money for groceries AND a car payment AND a house payment. She doesn’t care if gas is two dollars a gallon or four. She doesn’t care that Crisco is nearly ten dollars a container. She doesn’t care that butter is six dollars a pound and eggs are four-fifty a dozen. She doesn’t care about inflation or interest rates. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. She’s a billionaire. Her problems are nothing like mine, so her endorsement of a candidate is for reasons that have nothing…NOTHING…to do with my reality.
This is why the voting age is eighteen…because by then some people are smart enough to see of fallacy of taking the endorsements of billionaire celebrities – who are here today and then faded memories in a few years – as gospel.
It looks like her effect is a wash. Although 18% would be more likely to support a candidate endorsed by her, 17% would be LESS likely to support a candidate endorsed by her. I would like to see the male/female split on these numbers.
It is expected that she will endorse Biden. The meme that sums it up is:
Taylor Swift is a singer whose career is based on songs discussing her terrible choices in men. Taylor Swift endorses Joe Biden.
Jack, as Michael R. pointed out, this poll also indicated about the same number (17%) would be less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Swift. So it’s essentially a wash, meaning Swift has no real influence. This poll also indicated that the majority doesn’t really care what Swift does.
But we’ve seen this effect before, when Kennedy was running against Nixon.