Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Will she make another statement at the MTV awards show?

Taylor Swift revealed who she will be voting for on Nov. 5 for president, and it’s not Donald Trump, despite AI depictions of Swift falsely endorsing Trump’s presidential run. She also urged her more than 284 million followers to register to vote and to vote early, if possible.
More than 306,000 people have visited Vote.gov using the link Swift shared in her Instagram story, NPR reported.
Minutes after the first presidential debate Tuesday night, Swift posted on Instagram that she would voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz because Harris “fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
She continued, “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.”
Stevie Nicks referenced Swift in a post she shared urging people to register to vote, and signed it off as “Childless Dog Lady.”
“As my friend @taylorswift13 so eloquently stated, now is the time to research and choose the candidate that speaks to you and your beliefs. Only 54 days left until the election. Make sure you are registered to vote! Your vote in this election may be one of the most important things you ever do. Vote.gov.”
A poll conducted by Newsweek in May showed that 22% of voters who backed Joe Biden in 2020 said “they would be more likely to vote for a GOP candidate in an election if Swift endorsed them,” while 16% of voters who backed Trump “said they’d be more likely to vote for a Democrat candidate endorsed by Swift.”
“Taylor Swift, she is the biggest celebrity in the world who a heck of a lot of people look up to. It matters. It’ll matter in close states,” David Thomas, a Democratic strategist and former aide to then-Vice President Al Gore, told The Hill.
Swift has significant influence on millennials and Gen Z. Swift is active on social media and communicates with her fans through the platform those generations consume the most media.
“Her fan base probably aren’t the type of people that are going to watch this debate all the way through. They don’t get their views from legacy media. They get a lot of their information on social; they get it on Instagram, they get it on TikTok,” Cayce Myers, a professor of public relations and director of graduate studies at Virginia Tech’s school of communication, told The Hill. “So if she’s speaking about political issues in that forum, they are going to get their news potentially from her.”
However, a Swift endorsement is not an election win guarantee.
The first time Swift made a major public political statement was in 2018, and she urged voters to look into the record of Republican Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
She told her fans she planned to vote for Democrats Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for Blackburn’s seat. Cooper lost to Blackburn in the election.
The announcement was not coordinated with the Harris-Walz campaign, but shortly after the announcement, the campaign store released Swift-themed campaign friendship bracelets that sold out within minutes, according to The Associated Press.
Harris also walked off stage at a debate watch party to Swift’s feminist anthem song, “The Man.”
Swift signed off her post calling herself a “childless cat lady” — referencing a phrase Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, once said referring to Democrats.
Trump was asked about the endorsement on Fox News Wednesday morning, and said Swift is a “very liberal person” and that she will “she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” per CNN.
It’s not the first time Swift has urged fans to vote and register to vote. On National Voter Registration Day in 2023, she directed fans to register to vote, leading to 35,252 new registrations — a 23% jump over 2022, Deseret News reported.
When Swift shared her post endorsing Cooper in 2018, she also encouraged her young fans to register to vote. Following her announcement, analysts observed a significant spike in voter registrations in the age groups of 18 to 24 and 25-39, per Buzzfeed News.
“We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift’s post,” said Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for Vote.org told Buzzfeed News.
Swift has come out with strong phraseology surrounding the former president before.
Here are the times Swift has criticized Trump and other political leaders in the past:
Taylor Swift has the potential to become the most awarded musician in MTV Video Music Awards history Wednesday night.
The awards show has been known to encourage young viewers to register to vote, and there is speculation that Swift could possibly reiterate her support for the Harris campaign if she is in attendance and gets the mic. She is in attendance, according to MTV.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’s got political during a speech.