HER ERA “Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light,” Time editor
in chief Sam Jacobs wrote of the magazine’s choice, whose social media followers number in hundreds of millions and whose business empire is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. —AFP/ INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE AND VINOODH MATADIN FOR TIME
NEW YORK — Pop megastar Taylor Swift encouraged her millions of fans on Tuesday to vote in Super Tuesday primary contests across the U.S., but did not endorse any specific candidate.
The 14-time Grammy award winner, whose ongoing “Eras” tour is the world’s highest-grossing concert tour with more than $1 billion in ticket sales, told her 282 million followers on Instagram to make a voting plan on Tuesday, and linked to vote.org, a nonprofit voter registration group.
“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” she wrote on Instagram Stories, in white text against a black backdrop.
READ: Taylor Swift: pop star, political icon?
Swift has waded into politics before, endorsing President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in 2020. She has also denounced former President Donald Trump, a Republican.
Victor Shi, the youngest elected delegate for Joe Biden in 2020, cheered Swift’s post, thanking her on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“This is a simple, but hugely effective nudge for her followers — & just remember, voter registration rates broke records because of her,” he wrote. “This is why we will win.”
Nearly three-quarters of self-described avid Taylor Swift fans are white and just over half are women and Democrats, according to a March 2023 survey from Morning Consult. Forty-five percent of survey participants identified as millennials.
READ: Taylor Swift’s influence attracts conspiracy theories
During an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” last week, Biden joked with the host comedian about conspiracy theories that the president and the singer-songwriter are in “cahoots.” Meyers said recent polling showed 18% of Americans believed Biden and Swift were somehow working together.
Swift’s post came as Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook suffered a more than two-hour outage caused by a technical issue that impacted hundreds of thousands of users globally.
Swift’s massive fan base lifted local economies as she toured the United States and around the globe in 2023, and her romance with professional football player Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs drew new fans to the team’s games and the Super Bowl.