US pop star Taylor Swift has announced that she will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the November presidential election. “I will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election,” the singer wrote on the online network Instagram on Tuesday evening, immediately after the end of the aggressive TV debate between Harris and her Republican opponent Donald Trump.
The Democratic presidential candidate is committed to “rights and causes” that a “fighter” has to stand up for, Swift wrote as justification. Harris is a “prudent and talented” politician – “and I am convinced that we can achieve much more in this country if we are guided by calm and not chaos,” added the singer.
There had been speculation for weeks about Swift’s possible election call – after all, the singer has hundreds of millions of followers in online networks and her fans pay close attention to her every statement.
Both the right and the left had therefore long tried to co-opt Swift. But the singer remained silent about US politics for years – including in 2016, when right-wing populist Donald Trump won the presidential election.
At times there was speculation that the singer was close to the Republicans – until she broke her silence in 2018 and expressed her support for the Democratic Party candidate in the Senate election in her home state of Tennessee.
In the 2020 presidential election, Swift threw her support behind Democrat Joe Biden. She also condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nationwide abortion rights and continues to incorporate messages of support for the LGBTQ+ community into her songs and music videos. The 34-year-old also calls on her fans to register as voters.
Even before her public commitment to Harris, tens of thousands of Swift fans had spoken out in favor of the Democratic candidate. The “Swifties for Kamala” page has tens of thousands of subscribers on online services such as X, Facebook and Instagram. There are similar pages under the name “Swifties for Trump” – but with significantly fewer followers.
