New York.- If you think about it, Taylor Swift has been campaigning — via her Eras concert tour, which began in March 2023 — for almost as long as a typical presidential candidate who goes all the way. She’s been to more than a dozen states and performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people. She even went to the Super Bowl.
But that’s not why The New York Times verified Swift’s “favorable rating” in its most recent presidential poll of likely voters nationwide.
Last week, Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential bid after months of speculation, creating a frenzy of coverage and analysis of its potential impact on the campaign.
According to a poll by the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College conducted from Sept. 11 to 16 — after the debate and Swift’s endorsement that followed immediately after — 44 percent of likely voters nationwide have a favorable view of the music star, while 34 percent have an unfavorable view of her.
Swift posted her support on Instagram, writing that she supported Harris “because she fights for the rights and causes that I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a strong and talented leader, and I believe we can achieve so much more in this country if we are guided by calm and not chaos.”
The Times has never polled voters about Swift, but her decision appears to have quickly divided Americans along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 70 percent view her favorably, versus 23 percent of Republicans.
Among those with an unfavorable opinion, of course, is former President Donald Trump, who, over the weekend, wrote in a post on Truth Social: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
One wonders whether a well-chosen lyric from Trump — say, “And it would have been so sweet, if it had been me” — might have elicited at least some sympathy from Swifties, who, through their songs, are intimately familiar with heartbreak and rejection.
According to the Times/Inquirer/Siena poll, 47 percent of voters view Trump favorably, while 51 percent view him unfavorably. Harris is viewed favorably by 48 percent of voters and unfavorably by 49 percent.
In the weeks leading up to Swift’s endorsement, Trump shared fake, artificial intelligence-generated memes online suggesting she had endorsed him. Swift addressed that misinformation in her endorsement last week: “It led me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The easiest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
Of those polled, another 22 percent said they didn’t know what they thought of Swift, declined to say what they thought of her or didn’t know who she was. These voters, not surprisingly, were predominantly over 65 and male.
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