FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Voter Registration Has Surged Since Taylor Swift's Political Instagram Post

Vote.org say that 65,000 people signed up to vote yesterday after Swift endorsed two Democratic candidates in Tennessee.

Taylor Swift's decision to break her silence on all things political seems to have had an immediate impact. In an interview with Buzzfeed News this morning, Kamari Guthrie, Director of Communications for Vote.org., said that an unprecedented number of people across America registered to vote in the wake of Swift's Sunday night Instagram missive.

"We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift's post," Guthrie said. Those numbers, Buzzfeed helpfully point out, are remarkable considering that 190,178 people registered to vote in the entire month of September.

Advertisement

The numbers are even more startling in Tennessee, Swift's home state. Seriously, holy shit:

The organization has received 5,183 in the state so far this month—at least 2,144 of which were in the last 36 hours, [Guthrie] said, up from 2,811 new Tennessee voter registrations for the entire month of September and just 951 in August.

These numbers could make a significant difference when the midterm elections roll around on November 6. Swift backed two Democrats in her home state. Incumbent congressman Jim Cooper, representing Tennessee's 5th District, is all but assured of victory against his Republican challenger. But Phil Bredesen is locked in a close race for the Senate against Trump-backed Marsha Blackburn. FiveThirtyEight gives Bredesen a two-in-seven chance of winning that election, and they have Tennessee as the state second-most-likely to decide which party ends up in the majority overall.

We live in the upside-down.

Follow Alex Robert Ross on Twitter.