Boycotts are common when companies make unpopular decisions. Just ask Budweiser, Target, and Disney how their embrace of woke culture ended.
But boycotting a pop superstar for endorsing a candidate? That’s new.
In her Wildest Dreams, Taylor Swift couldn’t have imagined the backlash from endorsing Kamala Harris.
Since Swift endorsed the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Donald Trump for president, she has lost over 2 million Spotify listeners, according to data from Chartmetric, a music streaming analytics company.
When Swift announced her support for Harris in an Instagram post on September 10, 94 million unique Spotify listeners had streamed at least one of her songs in the past month. However, just over two weeks later, on September 27, her monthly unique listeners dropped to 91.9 million.
According to Chartmetric’s data, the number of people watching Taylor Swift’s YouTube videos in the U.S. dropped by almost 10% after she endorsed Harris. Before that endorsement, 102.4 million people watched her in the month leading up to it, but that number fell to 92.5 million monthly viewers by September 27.
Swift’s endorsement followed criticism from the media and fans that she hadn’t picked a side for the 2024 election. In early September, Glamour wondered if Taylor Swift would endorse Kamala Harris for president.
Vanity Fair said the world was “waiting eagerly” to see if Swift would use her influence to support Harris.
But it was hardly a mystery. In her 2020 documentary “Miss Americana,” she told her dad that she wished she had opposed Trump in 2016. She explained that she “wanted to be on the right side of history” when she became more politically active during the 2018 midterms.
In 2024, Swift made it clear that she would use her fame to back the candidates she believes in, even if it affects her popularity in music streaming.
But while crushing her popularity, Swift’s endorsement did little to nothing for Harris’s campaign.
While Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris for president got some attention, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s support for Donald Trump had a bigger effect on the 2024 election, according to a leading pollster.
On his Risky Business podcast, Nate Silver, founder of the data-focused news site FiveThirtyEight, called RFK Jr.’s endorsement the “most important” one of the race so far.
On August 23, the independent presidential candidate announced that he was dropping out of the race and supporting Trump because he realized he had no real chance of winning.
However, while in the race, the third-party candidate enjoyed a 3.3 percent support rating in the national polls.
Nate Silver correctly predicted the results in 49 out of 50 states when Barack Obama won against John McCain in 2008. He observed that RFK Jr.’s decision caused Harris’s poll numbers to drop by about half a point. Silver lamented that those voters were “lost” to Harris.
Democrats have sued to keep RFK’s name on ballots in swing states. They are banking on the average American voter to be too stupid to realize he is no longer running. Having his name as a spoiler is expected to siphon votes from Trump.
Weeks after RFK Jr. backed Trump, and just after Harris and Trump exchanged insults during a presidential debate, Swift announced her support for Harris on Instagram. She signed the post as the “Childless Cat Lady,” poking fun at Ohio Senator JD Vance’s comments.
Even though more than 400,000 voters clicked on Swift’s link to the voter registration site Vote.Gov after her announcement, Silver said her endorsement didn’t change the polls.
“The biggest pop star in the world endorses you, and you can barely see any difference in the polls,” a puzzled Silver said.
But there isn’t much that will organically change voters’ minds. Even the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night was not expected to have any measurable impact on Americans’ opinions of the candidates. A separate CNN poll found that only 1 percent of voters who watched the debate said it changed their minds about how they would vote in November.
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Swift was happy to throw her lot in with Harris, but it was all for nothing. Top of Form
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She has to be thinking, “Look What You Made Me Do,” as she faces a sizeable boycott of her music.
