In an unlikely turn of events, Taylor Swift has had a hand in increasing the number of registered voters in the United States.
Swift took to Instagram on Sunday to advise her fans that they should vote in this year’s approaching midterm elections, a move that was largely out of character for the apolitical singer. Now, Vote.org has seen an extraordinary surge in new voter registrations.
“We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift’s post,” Kamari Guthrie, Vote.org’s director of communications, told BuzzFeed News.
The number of people who registered is more than all of August—which saw 56,669 registrations—and over a third of the number who registered in September, which was 190,178 in total.
In her post, Swift shared that she's supporting the former governor of Tennessee Phil Bredesen in his Senate race and House member Jim Cooper. Both candidates are members of the Democratic Party and Swift plans to vote for them because of their commitment to equality.
“Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me,” Swift wrote.
Guthrie also shared that almost half of this month’s registrations for Tennessee—2,144 of 5,183—were received within the last 36 hours. September saw 2,811 registrations, while August saw 951.
More than that, Vote.org has seen an increase in site visitors since Sunday, with 155,940 unique users, the most they’ve seen after National Voter Registration Day. The site’s daily average is 14,078 users. “Thank God for Taylor Swift,” Guthrie told BuzzFeed News.
However, Donald Trump wasn’t too happy about Swift’s endorsement. While the president has been a fan of the singer in the past, he shared that he likes her music “about 25 percent less now.”
