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While Donald Trump is increasingly closer to securing the Republican nomination, President Joe Biden, who on the contrary is struggling, is trying to “energize” his election candidacy. The president’s trusted collaborators are therefore meticulously drawing up a precious list of so-called “surrogates”, that is, important figures who publicly support him and try to convince voters to support him in turn. At the top of the list must be the global superstar Taylor Swift, who with her 279 million followers on Instagram could give the right boost to Biden’s candidacy.
According to American political experts, a new public endorsement by Taylor – he had already done so in previous elections – could in fact influence around a million votes. The 2024 version of the Oprah Winfrey effect for Barack Obama in 2008, when the media queen brought the former president over a million votes.
Trump’s staff has been working on a strategy for some time to deal with a possible endorsement from the pop star, which is instead largely underestimated by the former president. According to sources close to the White House, Trump recently said in private that no celebrity will be able to save Biden with their support, adding that he is “more popular” than Taylor and has much more loyal fans. A burst of egocentrism that is not surprising, but which dangerously underestimates the singer-songwriter’s extraordinary economic and political power.
Taylor, who Time named person of the year in 2023, calling her “the master storyteller of the modern era”, has in the past given ample proof of the influence she can have in the political field, demonstrating that a simple Instagram post or an aside half a concert can mobilize millions of voters. Her first endorsement came in 2018, when she spoke out in the Tennessee congressional elections in favor of Democratic candidates. Precisely those elections – later won by the Republicans – inspired one of the artist’s most famous songs, Only the Young, whose lyrics talk about school shootings, Donald Trump and concerns about vote tampering, inviting young people to fight for your own ideas.
In September, the singer posted a short message on Instagram encouraging her followers to register to vote. In the following hour, the site she referred Taylor to recorded a 1,226% increase in users, for a total of 35,000 new users registered over the course of the day, a record. Notably, there was a 72% increase in registered 18-year-olds compared to the previous election.