Fact Check: How Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris might impact the U.S. presidential election…

Taylor Swift is nobody’s idea of an opening act, and she followed Kamala Harris’s first U.S. presidential debate performance minutes later by endorsing the Democratic nominee.

Swift made the endorsement for the Nov. 5 presidential election in an Instagram post to her 283 million followers, calling Harris a “steady-handed, gifted leader.”

“There were people this morning on my TikTok page who were literally crying because of this news, just crying out of joy and relief,” said Brian Donovan, a University of Kansas professor who teaches a course called The Sociology of Taylor Swift.

The impact of celebrity endorsements on voting results is difficult to isolate from other factors, and the research that exists largely predates an era where social media and influencers help drive narratives and news coverage.

An all-star lineup in the multi-city Vote for Change tour largely stumped for John Kerry in 2004 — the Democrat didn’t win, though it’s possible the tour’s voter mobilization efforts had some impact, as turnout in the youngest cohort jumped nearly 10 percentage points from the previous two elections.

Swift won one and lost one in specific endorsements of candidates for U.S. Congress in her home state of Tennessee in 2018, but neither of those contests were seen as toss-ups before she did so.

In an April survey conducted by Tennessee’s Beacon Center, a free market think-tank, 81 per cent said a Swift endorsement would not affect the way they plan to vote, with 12 per cent saying it would make them more likely to vote for her endorsed candidate, and five per cent saying it would make them less likely.

“Fans aren’t blind followers of their celebrities, but rather, they engage celebrities in rigorous ways,” said Ashley Hinck, associate professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, who’s been studying online fan communities and political discourse for 15 years.

There has been one notable case study, which concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primaries “had statistically and politically significant effects on Obama’s political outcomes,” estimating that over one million votes went the Illinois senator’s way as he battled Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.