Analysis of Taylor Swift's Impact on the American Presidential Elections

Following the debate between the two candidates in the 2024 American presidential elections, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the singer Taylor Swift announced her support for Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party's candidate for President of the United States.

But what could be the actual impact of Taylor Swift's endorsement on the American elections? Beyond the emotional factor, what are Taylor Swift's numbers? How many voters could Taylor Swift's support for the Democratic candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential elections sway or influence?

Let's try to conduct a numerical/quantitative analysis of the potential impact on the American elections starting from the number of Taylor Swift's followers on Instagram. Obviously, this is an analysis that does not claim statistical rigor, much less predictive statistical value. Beyond this, however, our analysis at least provides a quantitative dimension, albeit very preliminary, to the value of Taylor Swift's support for a candidate in the race for the presidency of the USA.

Our analysis starts precisely from the number of followers of Taylor Swift on her Instagram profile and on these, we have applied percentages derived from the universe of American eligible voters. The strongest limitation of this type of analysis is the lack of information on the geographical distribution of Taylor Swift's followers. In the absence of anything else, still better than nothing.

Taylor Swift's Numbers

• Followers of Taylor Swift on Instagram: 283 million
• of which: 180 million are American adults
• Of these, 36 million are the so-called "die-hard" [devoted or fanatics, so to speak]

If we apply the normal percentages related to the American electorate to the number of Taylor Swift's "devoted" followers, we have:

• Percentage of independent voters 23% [*] = 8 million
• Percentage of undecided voters 6% = 480,000 [8 million x 6%]

[*] This percentage relates to Taylor Swift's followers and not the entire American electorate. We did this because a specific survey of Taylor Swift's fans provides us with this data. Other data on the segmentation of Taylor Swift's followers on Instagram are as follows:
- Caucasian 74%
- 52% women / 48% men

480,000 is therefore the number of American voters who could be susceptible to being influenced by Taylor Swift's endorsement [voters who identify as "independent" - neither Democrats nor Republicans - and who may vote for one or the other party depending on the year, and who have yet to decide who to vote for]

It's significant that after her endorsement, within 24 hours, more than 400,000 of Taylor Swift's followers followed her advice and clicked on a website that directed them to a site where they could register to vote. In the following two days, a total of 726,000 people visited the website. It's not known how many of these actually registered.

Considering that in the 2020 presidential elections, in the seven battleground states, the margin between the votes received by Biden and those received by Trump was about 340,000 votes, we can clearly see that the number of voters who could potentially be mobilized by Taylor Swift's endorsement is not trivial and could even make a difference. The power of music...