Taylor Swift may be single-handedly responsible for a tens of thousands uptick in registered voters.
The singer, who has long avoided wading into politics, broke that trend in a Sunday Instagram post. Writing that she’s “been reluctant to publicly voice” her political opinions in the past, “several events” in her life and the world have made her feel differently.
Swift went on to encourage her 112 million followers to register to vote, noting that Oct. 9 is the last day to register in her home state of Tennessee.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/?hl=en&taken-by=taylorswift
And it appears Swift’s appeal worked—vote.org was flooded with new registrations across the country in the 24 hours after the singer uploaded her post.
Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for vote.org, told BuzzFeed that the site saw 65,000 registrations between Sunday and Monday—about a third as many as the site had in the entire month of September (190,178 new registrations).
In Tennessee specifically, close to half of October’s new registrations took place in the 36 hours after Swift’s post went up. Of the 5,183 registrations that Vote.org has received, at least 2,144 of them came after the post, according to Guthrie.
But that’s not all. The number of unique visitors to the site also soared, with 155,940 unique visitors in the day following the post. That number is only bested by the number of visitors on National Voter Registration Day, when the site had 304,942 unique visitors. For context, the site typically sees an average of 14,078 visitors this year.
“Thank God for Taylor Swift,” Guthrie said.
There’s at least one person who did not respond favorably to Swift’s post: President Trump. After hearing that Swift endorsed two Democrats, Trump told reporters on Monday, “Let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25% less now, OK?”
