Support for Taylor Swift get-out-the-vote efforts falls after Super Bowl conspiracy theory
More than half of voters in a new survey say they support pop star Taylor Swift’s get-out-the-vote effort to push her fans to vote in this year’s election, but the number is down 15 points from February following a conspiracy theory surrounding the idea of a rigged Super Bowl.
The newly released Monmouth University poll found 53 percent of voters approve of Swift’s push to get her fans to vote, with 35 percent saying they disapprove. Twelve percent said they didn’t know.
After the debate between former President Trump and Vice President Harris last week, Swift endorsed Harris.
Swift is dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and attended the team’s Super Bowl game against the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas. At the time, a conspiracy theory was floated that the game could be rigged for the Chiefs to ensure maximum exposure for a Swift endorsement of President Biden.
There was no evidence of such a plot, and there was no endorsement at that time from Swift.
But Monmouth noted support for Swift’s efforts has dropped significantly since the conspiracy theory.
“Interestingly, support for the singer’s get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts were much higher seven months ago, when she was the subject of a debunked conspiracy theory around the election and the Super Bowl,” Monmouth wrote in a press release.
It noted that 68 percent of voters backed Swift’s turn-out-the-vote efforts in February. While support for Swift’s political engagement remains “astronomically high” among Democrats, Monmouth noted, it has dropped from 41 percent to 20 percent among Republicans and 73 percent to 52 percent among independents.
“Republicans were wary of Swift all along. What we don’t know is whether this will have any effect on the part of her fan base who already leans right,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, in the release.
The poll comes a week after the 14-time Grammy award winner issued her much-anticipated endorsement of Harris.
“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” Swift wrote to her 283 million Instagram followers. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered!”
Less than 24 hours after her post, the General Services Administration announced that more than 330,000 visitors who had been referred to the voter information website through Swift’s custom link had flocked to vote.gov.
Despite Swift’s Democratic endorsement, 81 percent in an ABC News/Ipsos poll earlier this week said her support for Harris will not influence how they vote, with only 6 percent of respondents saying they are more likely to vote for Harris after Swift’s nod. Thirteen percent said it makes them less likely to back the Democratic ticket.
The Monmouth University poll was conducted from Sept. 11-15 with a probability-based national random sample of 803 voters and has a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.
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