politics

The White House race between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris continues to be incredibly tight. With less than two months to go before Americans cast their votes, both candidates are doing everything they can to lock in their core constituents, amidst a desperate scramble to rope in crucial undecided and uninspired voters who could tip the scales in their favor.

And while the GOP has long hewed to the old saw that celebrity endorsements don’t move the needle on election day, this year has already shown how the right A-list seal of approval could be one of the decisive factors in the battle between twice-impeached convicted felon Trump and 11th-hour Democratic candidate VP Harris.

The proof is in the immediate impact felt by Taylor Swift throwing her hat into the ring two weeks ago with a strongly worded endorsement of Harris and VP pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. After Swift encouraged young voters to register at Vote.gov following the Democratic National Convention, more than 405,000 people clicked through in strong example of Swift’s potential impact on the outcome in November, easily besting the site’s early September daily tally of 30,000 visitors.

A week later, Trump lashed out at the megastar, who has been selling out stadiums around the world for the past year on her culture-dominating Eras Tour, while also getting weekly high-profile, multi-demo screen time during NFL season thanks to her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” the candidate raged on his Truth Social platform over the weekend.

According to a YouGov poll conducted last week, more than 53% of Americans — including 31% of Republicans — think Swift’s endorsement will help Harris; 4% thought it might hurt Harris. That poll came on the heels of a February survey by Change Research that found that 65% of Democrats had a favorable view of Swift, while 29% of independents and just 17% of Republicans felt the same. For now, though, it’s still unclear if Swift’s endorsement will actually help Harris — based on a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, in which 81% of voters surveyed said Swift’s support for the VP will not influence how they vote. Only six percent said they are more likely to vote for Harris since Swift’s post, with 13 percent saying it makes them less likely to do so.

With the Nov. 5 election just 47 days away, Billboard spoke to a group of academics, political consultants, pollsters and music managers to see if they think Swift’s endorsement — and Trump’s lashing out — could help push Harris/Walz over the top, or turn the tide in Trump’s favor.

“People Will at Least Listen to Her”

“This election will be decided by a few thousand votes in three or four key states, so everything matters,” says veteran pollster and communications analyst Frank Luntz. “Will this be the deciding factor? Probably not. But will it have an impact? Most definitely.”

Luntz, who has done a series of stories asking the same group of young, undecided voters about the election for the New York Times since August, says before President Biden dropped out to make way for Harris, he polled voters about who would have the most influence on their vote. In first place was Trump at 38%, with Biden at 34% and Swift not far behind at 25%.

“I was really shocked by that,” he says. “At the time, Biden was so weak among younger women, and they are among the Democrats’ most reliable voting group — and [Swift] matters significantly, because she’s not seen as a politician and she’s not seen as a partisan. So people will at least listen to her.”

In addition, Luntz says, he thinks Swift handled the wording of her endorsement “quite well,” with language that explained “with some sophistication” why she did what she did. Among the reasons Swift cited for speaking out was her fear and anger over an incident last month in which Trump platformed fake AI-generated images of the singer falsely claiming she was supporting him.

Brilliant Corners Artist Managment (Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service, Best Coast) co-founder Jordan Kurland knows a bit about speaking out during crucial elections, thanks to his time serving on the Entertainment Advisory Committee for both former two-term Democratic President Barack Obama and the unsuccessful 2016 Clinton presidential campaign against Trump. He also was impressed with the way Swift made it more about voting than herself.

“I appreciate that she talks about doing her research and encouraging people to not just vote for the candidate because your favorite pop star said so, but to really get to know the issues,” says Kurland.

“The icy peak of dumbf–k mountain”

While an older generation of artists, such as Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand, have been reliable democratic party boosters and endorsers in the past, Luntz and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson (author of Everything Trump Touches Dies) say that Swift is a new kind of political force — with a massive, multi-media reach that could rope in sometimes unreliable, unmotivated young voters.

“Taylor Swift represents a different category of celebrity than almost anyone under the sun,” says the former Republican and political strategist Wilson, who co-founded the Lincoln Project Super PAC in 2019 in an effort to prevent Trump from being re-elected. “She’s sui generis in terms of the reach she has and her impact on young women, not to mention their fathers and mothers.”

Swift not only rules the Billboard charts on an almost constant basis, as well as having a culture-dominating Eras Tour and accompanying movie, but also makes headlines every weekend from the sky box as she cheers on Kelce. NFL games averaged 17.9 million viewers each in 2023, a year when 45 NFL games were among the 100 most-watched prime-time telecasts, with the league hogging 14 of the top 15 slots.

Add in 4.35 million tickets sold for her 60 Eras Tour U.S. shows in 2023, and Wilson says you have an artist whose reach — and influence — is virtually unmatched in modern pop history.

“Some of those girls who first loved her are now young women whose mothers took them to see Swift 10-15 years ago,” says Wilson. “And she has a relationship to those women and girls that Republicans are trying to make fun of — [they say] ‘her music is about bad choices, that’s why this is a bad choice’ — but her candor about her life, and the way it plays through her art, makes her relatable and engages people and makes them feel connected to her beyond her music and entertainment.”

In addition to being major pop culture moments and serious financial boosters for every city Swift visits, Wilson wryly notes that “nobody leaves a Taylor Swift show early or cranky, which is exactly the opposite of a Trump rally. They stay until the last minute and come away feeling happy and empowered.” (Wilson says he joked on MSNBC last week that he’d devised a new spin on the traditional warning about the historically biggest mistakes a politician can make: invading Moscow in the winter, launching a land war in Asia… and screwing with Swifties.)

As for Trump’s “HATE” tweet, Wilson came up with a new description of what he said was an unfathomably stupid self-own targeting a potentially crucial group of voters. “It wasn’t just a stupid idea,” he says. “If there was an Olympian level of stupidity, a mountain in the far distance of stupid ideas, it’s the very pinnacle, the icy peak of dumbf–k mountain.”

“They got Kid Rock and you have Taylor Swift”

Renowned political consultant and pundit James Carville, the lead strategist for Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 campaign, maintains that the evidence that celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on voting behavior is “pretty thin.” But, he adds, at the very least Swift’s endorsement will “drive [Trump] crazy” — as evidenced by the billionaire real estate mogul’s all-caps tweet and running mate JD Vance’s (somewhat) tempered double-down on Fox News last week. “We admire Taylor Swift’s music — but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans,” opined the former venture capitalist, multi-millionaire Ohio senator.

In addition to her endorsement potentially distracting Trump, and his hate in response turning off many 18-34 young female voters who could be crucial to a win in November, Carville says Swift’s urge to register to vote could definitely make a difference. “It’s impressive that people did an affirmative act [in registering to vote], and he knows that,” says Carville. “They got Kid Rock and you have Taylor Swift. How is that gonna work out?”

Despite political veteran Carville’s on-the-fence status about celebrity endorsements, Penn State University associate professor of political communications and gender Dr. E. Michele Ramsey says that there is “all kinds of research” showing that the “perceived authenticity” of a celebrity’s thumbs-up does move the needle for “either a product or a candidate.”

Ramsey, who teaches the “Taylor Swift, Gender and Communication” course, says Swift’s action could make a difference among low-information voters, a crucial demo this year. She says we’re a moment now where women’s stories are loudly taking center stage on playlists, in the movies and on social media thanks to massive exposure for projects from not only Swift, but also such pop culture juggernauts as Beyoncé, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish, and even last year’s billion-dollar Barbie movie. And while Swifties are generally more likely to vote for Democrats according to a recent YouGov poll, she is so hugely popular that it’s likely she has fans across a broad political, and geographic spectrum.

“We’re in a unique moment in history where women’s stories are at the top of the food chain, where all these performers are speaking in a very vulnerable situation and expressing feelings that I think many women [and others] can relate to,” Ramsey says about an era when a woman’s right to choose has taken center stage. That state-by-state battle of course follows the overturning of Roe V. Wade two years ago, thanks to Trump’s elevation of three new conservative Supreme Court justices ,who helped overturn a woman’s federally protected right to abortion.

So far, in addition to Swift, a raft of other musicians and stars who appeal to the young female demo have endorsed Harris, including Beyoncé, Eilish, Roan, Rodrigo, Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Charli XCX, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Kesha, Megan Thee Stallion and P!nk. Trump has gotten endorsements from a less pop-culture-relevant group: one that includes Kid Rock, Billly Ray Cyrus, Kanye West, Lil Pump, Jason Aldean, Kodak Black and Azealia Banks.

“I’ve never seen a political party that just wants to poke the bear as much as they can,” Ramsey adds about the GOP’s decades-long drive to make abortion illegal, as well as attempts to limit the availability of IVF treatments and contraception, and Vance’s now-infamous put-down of Harris (and other Democrats) as “childless cat ladies.” (Swift sharply signed her endorsement as a member of the latter group, while posting a picture of her holding one of her cats.)

Ramsey notes that while young voters don’t tend to trust dusty institutions or traditional politicians, they do put faith in idols they want to emulate — as evidenced by the quickly formed Swifties for Kamala group that pulled together the day Biden dropped out. “If I was a campaign consultant to Republicans, I would tell them to stop saying anything about Taylor Swift,” he counsels.

At the end of the day, Luntz thinks “everything” makes a difference when you’re talking about an election measured in inches, not miles. He points out the Harris campaign’s potential to lean into Swift’s pop culture pull, as they already have with Taylor-themed campaign friendship bracelets and political ads. “You’re seeking any kind of momentum, any kind of edge,” he explains.

In Luntz’s mind, if the singer doubled-down against Trump’s childish “if you don’t like me, I don’t like you more” “HATE” post and turned his ire against him, it could be a key brick in Harris’ firewall: “She [Swift] could easily turn that into, ‘you don’t like me, WE don’t like you and we’re gonna have the last laugh!’”

At press time spokespeople for the Trump and Harris campaign had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.

The Lincoln Project has spent the better part of five years warning Americans about what they see as the danger of second Donald Trump administration. The political action committee made up of moderate conservatives and former GOP members — including George Conway, ex-husband of Trump’s former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway — will release its latest broadside against twice-impeached, convicted felon Trump on Thursday morning (Sept. 18).

And in keeping with the raft of headlines over the past few weeks, it involves Taylor Swift. Specifically, the minute-long “Bad Blood” spot — which Billboard is exclusively previewing today — paints Trump’s recent rant against the pop star as being in line with what the group says is Trump’s long-running contempt for successful women.

The ad — whose landing page features the all caps subtitle: “THE MISOGYNISTIC PRESIDENTS’ DEPARTMENT” in a nod to the title of Swift’s most recent studio album — is titled “Bad Blood,” a reference to Swift’s 1989 single of the same. It opens with a shot of Swift accepting an award at last week’s 2024 MTV VMAs as a voiceover notes, “Taylor Swift isn’t the first successful woman Donald Trump has attacked… she’s just the most recent.” The screen then fills with a shot of a post from Trump’s Truth Social account from Sunday in which he said in all caps: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”

The rest of the spot is a super-cut of Trump’s most well-known put-downs of famous and prominent women over the years, including his reference to what he called comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s “fat, ugly face. The narrator continues, “Trump has a problem with women… disrespectful…insulting…even violence,” over images of Trump during his contentious 2016 presidential debate with former Senator and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, in which he referred to her as “the devil.” It also includes the time the reality TV host insulted Celebrity Apprentice contestant Brande Roderick with the crude oral sex reference, “must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.”

“It’s ugly,” the female narrator says over footage of a smiling Trump telling ABC reporter Cecilia Vega, “I know you’re not thinking, you never do.”

“It’s cruel,” the narrator adds as the subject turns to a 2016 MSNBC interview in which then-candidate Trump said “there has to be some form of punishment [for women],” for having an abortion; the Supreme Court reversed the half-century-long constitutional right to abortion two years ago after Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices, a ruling he called “the biggest win for life in a generation.”

“One thing he’s proven is that he’ll never change,” the narrator says over footage of Trump signing a document on the back of a bent-over woman as well as putting his signature on the upper half of a female supporter’s dress. It also includes the infamous leaked Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged that when you’re a celebrity women allow you to “grab ’em by the p–sy,” which surfaced before election day in 2016.

“Is this how you would want a man to treat your daughter?” the narrator asks over Trump’s crude description of former Fox News anchor and 2016 debate moderator Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her whatever” after she pressed him on his past history of referring to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”

“You know the answer, you know the truth,” the ad concludes as Swift fills the screen again, along with audio from a recent Fox News segment in which Trump said he was never a fan of the billionaire pop star and predicted that her endorsement of rival Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will find her “pay[ing] a price for it” in the marketplace.

“He says he hates Taylor… but the truth is he hates all of us.”

Watch the Lincoln Project’s “Bad Blood” ad below.