Taylor Swift’s social media post urging Americans to register to vote has sparked a massive spike in traffic to the country’s official election information site, with more than ten times as many visitors in 24 hours as in the entire previous week.
On Tuesday, right after the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Taylor Swift posted on Instagramin which she supported a Democrat in this year's presidential election. She also encouraged Americans to register to vote in the election. In her story, she included a link to the official government website – Vote.gov. There is information about voting as well as links to websites in individual states where voters can register.
Taylor Swift Encourages Americans to Register to Vote
Vote.gov officials say Swift's post generated a huge increase in traffic to the site. A spokesperson for the General Services Administration (GSA), which runs Vote.gov, told Variety that within 24 hours of the post's release, the site had 405,999 visitors who had been redirected directly through the singer's link. That's more than ten times more than the traffic recorded in the previous week, when from September 3 to 9, the site had about 30,000 daily visitors. The spokesperson added that Swift's traffic accounted for more than half of the site's total traffic that day, with a total of 726,523 visitors.
It’s unclear exactly how many of those encouraged by Swift ultimately registered to vote. The GSA says it saw more than 27,000 new registrations on Sept. 11, as well as more than 80,000 confirmations of registration status.
On Wednesday night, at the 2024 MTV VMAs, Swift once again encouraged people to register. Accepting the night's biggest award, she pleaded, “I really appreciate the fact that this is a fan-voted award, you voted for it. And if you're over 18, please register to vote for something else that's really important, the upcoming presidential election.”
Main image source: Doug Peters/PAP/EPA