Look what Taylor made you do! Taylor Swift's influence saw record breaking traffic on Vote.org on Tuesday September 19 in the hours after she encouraged her 273 million Instagram followers to make sure they were registered to vote.
The 33-year-old pop star – who has been spending time this past week with Sophie Turner, the estranged wife of Taylor's ex-boyfriend Joe Jonas – helped the non-partisan organization register more than 35,000 voters after the post, a 22.5% increase from the previous year. Vote.org also helped 50,000 people verify their registration status.
"Vote.org saw record-breaking traffic to our site this week as we celebrated National Voter Registration Day, a highly encouraging sign of voter enthusiasm especially among newly eligible voters," Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey shared in a news release to HELLO! – and revealed that the site saw "a 1226% jump in participation the hour after Taylor Swift posted," and was "averaging 13,000 users every 30 minutes – a number that Taylor Swift would be proud of".
Thirteen is famously Taylor's lucky number.
"Vote.org is seizing on this momentum and jump-starting our plans to register eight million voters before Election Day 2024. We’ve already launched our registration program with our youth efforts across campuses, influencer engagement, radio, digital, social media and direct voter contacts. The 2024 election is already here, and now, it’s time to turn this enthusiasm into votes," Hailey added.
"Wanna know something even more wild? We see an 849% increase here compared to 2021. 849%! This generation's eagerness to participate is a game changer," Hailey posted on social media.
"They are the future, and their energy will shape the outcomes of upcoming elections."
The 33-year-old pop star's Instagram Story – sent on National Voter Registration Day - included a link to Vote.org and read: "I've been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my US shows recently.
"I've heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you're ready to use them in our elections this year!"
The 2023 elections are scheduled to be held on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, and include gubernatorial and state legislative elections in a few states, as well as many mayoral and local races.
Taylor has partnered with Vote.org for the past few years, since she broke her political silence following the 2016 election.
In her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, she spoke of her regret at not speaking out against President Donald Trump, and argued with her team about her decision to publicly endorse a Democratic candidate in the 2018 midterms.
She put her support behind Tennessee's Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, and slammed his Republican opponent, then U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, citing her poor record on LGBTQ rights and voting against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013.
"In the past I've been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now," she wrote at the time, encouraging voter registration and the need to "educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values".
Taylor and Sophie have been friends for several years after first publicly meeting on The Graham Norton Show in the UK in 2019. Game of Thrones actress Sophie then revealed they had met a few times prior, and in 2020 Taylor included a line in her song 'Invisible String,' which hinted at sending presents to Joe and Sophie's newborn baby girl Willa.
"Cold was the steel of my axe to grind / For the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents," she sang.
Following news of Sophie's unexpected divorce from Joe, the actress and Taylor have been spending time together in New York, grabbing dinner with friends twice in one week.
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