Taylor Swift’s Political Statement Has Triggered Jokes And An ‘Unprecedented’ Voter Registration Spike

Getty Image

Taylor Swift unexpectedly took a political stance on Sunday, throwing her support behind Tennessee Democratic candidates while urging her fans to register to vote and “educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values.” In other words, she didn’t tell her fans who to vote for, just that they should vote. Nonetheless, jimmies were rustled, with conservative pundits going on the network that routinely asks Kid Rock for political commentary to say Taylor Swift shouldn’t make political commentary. What a world.

And now that a few days have passed, we can look back on some of the reactions to her political statement, both from people making jokes and from people motivated to finally register to vote. As for the latter group, the voter registration website Swift recommended to her 112 million followers (Vote.org) told Buzzfeed they’ve seen an “unprecedented” number of new voter registrations (65,000) in the 24 hours after Swift’s post. In Swift’s home state of Tennessee, at least 2,144 registrations were made in the 36 hours after Swift’s post. For comparison, Vote.org received only 2,811 new Tennessee voter registrations during the entire month of September. We don’t have any jokes about that; it’s just damn impressive.

People on Twitter had jokes, however, with plenty of folks surprised to be suddenly siding with Taylor Swift instead of the MAGA hat-wearing Kanye West:

Others joked about the futility of trying to boycott Taylor Swift:

Some were especially pleased to think about how upset the alt-right might get over this:

And some made gamergate references:

Others reminded us to not mess with T-Swift or her army:

Some put things into perspective:

Others just weren’t impressed:

This week has been quite a year.

Speaking of voting, you can go to iwillvote or vote.org to register or to confirm that you’re still on the voter rolls.

×