Taylor Swift gets credit for spike in voter registration
Look what Taylor Swift made people do.
Following the singer’s first political statement, voter registration nationwide and in her home state of Tennessee has seen a significant increase.
A spokesperson for Vote.org tells Yahoo Entertainment the site has seen more than 105,000 new registrations since Sunday evening, when Swift’s post went up and pointed to the site. For comparison, on average it has received about 1,000 new registrations a day in 2018.
The highest number of new registrations came from people in the 18-24 age range, with 44,801. Here is the full breakdown by age group:
18-24: 44,801
25-29: 19,838
30-39: 18,119
40-49: 8,142
50-59: 6,723
60-69: 4,915
70+: 2,465
In Swift’s home state of Tennessee — where the singer hopes Democratic candidates Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for the House of Representatives win — Vote.org has 5,183 new registrations in October so far, with 2,144 from the last 36 hours. By comparison, there were 2,811 in all of September.
Swift’s political post, which cited the reasons she doesn’t want Marsha Blackburn to win the Senate seat, was criticized by President Trump on Monday. “Let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, okay?” was his response to reporters after he was told she wasn’t backing Blackburn. He added that Blackburn “is doing a very good job now in Tennessee,” and said she’s “leading now substantially” in the polls, “which she should.” Adding: “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about her.”
Another famous critic was Mike Huckabee, who took a dig at Swift by suggesting her fans were a bunch of 13-year-old girls, years away from the voting age. However, her Swifties, who helped her break attendance records on her current worldwide tour, quickly came to her defense.
On Tuesday night, Swift will open the American Music Awards. It will be her first performance at an awards show in three years.
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