How Taylor Swift’s endorsement could shape the 2024 election
(WASHINGTON) — Taylor Swift made headlines after Tuesday night’s debate by endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president, and experts are already looking at the pop star’s possible influence on the 2024 election.
“If you self-identify as someone who sees the world like Taylor Swift does, you might go, ‘Huh, maybe I should be voting like that also,'” Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book For the Culture, told ABC News. “It sort of sends a bat signal for what potentially is acceptable for people like me.”
“This sort of social signaling is important to us,” he continued. “It helps us define who we are, our identity, what to think, how to behave.”
These effects can be subtle but significant, Collins said. For example, a conservative Swiftie might find those two identities at odds with each other and begin to question their beliefs.
“People may find themselves in cognitive dissonance, where their identity and how they see the world are in conflict with other parts of their identity,” he said. “There has to be some sense of reconciliation.”
The pop superstar said Tuesday night that she would be voting for Harris “because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
Swift said she was voting for the Harris-Tim Walz ticket after doing her research and, in her post, encouraged her Instagram followers to do their own. She also shared a link to Vote.org, a resource to help people register to vote in their home state.
“She knows that she’s speaking to a number of people who will be voting either for the first time ever or for the first time for a president,” Megan Duncan, an associate professor at Virginia Tech specializing in political communication, told ABC News. “And she knows that getting that bit of education about how to register and that you can vote early in many states is the stuff that celebrities are effective at.”
This isn’t the first time Swift has encouraged her fans to register to vote. In 2018 and 2023, she also made Instagram posts about voter registration, and tens of thousands of people signed up in the days that followed.
Swift’s support for Harris shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Though once publicly apolitical, Swift has become more outspoken about her political beliefs in recent years. In 2020, she endorsed President Joe Biden and lambasted then-President Donald Trump for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism” and putting “millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power.”
Fans had long anticipated her making an endorsement in the 2024 race. Much of her fanbase is young — predominately millennials and Gen Z — a demographic that consistently has lower voter turnout than older generations and whose members may have never voted.
It’s not just young people Swift is in a position to sway. Many of her fans belong to another critical demographic: white women, over half of whom voted red in both 2016 and 2020.
“It’s a huge voter block — and not only that, but it’s a voter block that we’ve seen be consequential with regards to elections, particularly with Donald Trump,” Collins told ABC News.
How Swift’s endorsement will shape the election is yet to be seen, but her message’s reach has already been massive. The General Services Administration told ABC News that, as of 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, more than 330,000 people had visited the voter registration site linked by Swift.
Not long after Swift’s endorsement, a spokesperson for the vice president said Harris was “very proud” to have the singer’s support and said it came as a complete surprise.
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Friday he is suspending his long-shot campaign for president and instead supporting former President Donald Trump.
He did so at an event in Phoenix, Arizona, during which he encouraged voters in red or blue states to vote for him but said he would remove himself from the ballot in battleground states where he could act as a “spoiler.”
“I want everyone to know that I am not terminating my campaign,” he said. “I am simply suspending it and not ending it.”
He went on to explain what drove him to enter the race, to leave the Democratic Party and “now to throw my support to President Trump.”
Just before he took the stage, his campaign filed a court document in Pennsylvania which said Kennedy would endorse Trump.
Trump, who was in Nevada campaigning as Kennedy spoke, quickly celebrated his support. Trump will be in Arizona later Friday to hold a rally in Glendale, where he teased he would be joined by a “special guest.”
“We just had a very nice endorsement from RFK Jr., Bobby,” Trump said in Las Vegas. “That’s big. He’s a great guy, respected by everybody.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee responded to Kennedy’s announcement with a statement of “good riddance.”
“Today, in a bizarre, rambling announcement, RFK Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump for President,” the DNC’s senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill. “This should come as no surprise, his candidacy has never been anything other than a spoiler campaign for Trump.”
Kennedy began his White House run in April 2023 as a Democrat to challenge President Joe Biden, but months later dropped the bid and the party that his family has symbolized for decades to chart a new course as an independent. He named Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer, to be his running mate.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stance and controversial remarks about COVID-19 had alienated him among Democrats, and he frequently sparred with the Democratic National Committee about the primary process, which he decried as unfair.
Members of his own family, too, were critical of his views and of his presidential run. Fifteen Kennedy family members made a statement by endorsing Biden at a campaign stop in Philadelphia when he was still in the race.
Five of his siblings released a joint statement on Friday stating they believed in Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride. We believe in Harris and Walz,” said Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy and Rory Kennedy.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” the continued. “It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(CHICAGO) — When then-Sen. Barack Obama took the stage on Aug. 28, 2008, to accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not mention the historic nature of his run. While he gave a nod to his midwestern middle-class upbringing and his Kenyan roots, the man who became the first Black president of the United States urged voters to unite and declared that the campaign was not about him.
“I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you,” Obama said.
Fifteen years later, when Obama took the DNC stage on Tuesday night, he delivered a resounding endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Obama struck a similar tone. He did not explicitly discuss Harris’ racial identity as a Black and South Asian woman or her gender identity like Hillary Clinton did on Monday night when the former Democratic nominee passed the torch to Harris with a reference to breaking the “glass ceiling.”
“Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems – she’ll be focused on yours,” Obama said.
Harris, who embarked on a historic run of her own, would become the first female president and second president of color if elected in the 2024 general election.
She has spoken with pride about her Jamaican and Indian heritage, and when she ran for president in 2020, her campaign logo was modeled after that of Shirley Chisholm – the first Black woman to run for president – and when she addressed the DNC as vice presidential nominee, she paid tribute to the women of color in politics who came before her.
It is unclear if Harris will focus on her historic run when she delivers her own acceptance speech at the DNC on Thursday. But according to experts who study race, politics and the White House, Harris has so far not made her identity a central part of her 2024 campaign like Clinton did in 2016 and like Harris did in 2020 and has instead, taken a page out of the playbook that propelled the first Black president to the White House.
“[Like Obama], Harris is letting other people talk about her identity. So you’re putting out the surrogates,” Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University who studies Black women in politics, told ABC News. “She’s not shying away from her identity, but she’s not centering this entire race and campaign on her identity.”
But is this a winning strategy?
‘Not more of the same’
Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris last month, there has been a surge in “enthusiasm” for the Democratic ticket that crossed “generational boundaries,” according to Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, who studies race and the American presidency. This shift in energy was evidenced by the $310 million fundraising haul that her campaign raised in July alone, Rigueur said.
This surge in enthusiasm is reflected in an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, which found that 50% overall say they’d be enthusiastic or satisfied if Harris were elected, compared with 36% who said that about Biden in early 2023.
According to Rigueur, the shift in “energy” is not merely a reflection of voters being excited about the historic nature of Harris’ run, but also indicative of the dissatisfaction with another matchup between Biden and former President Donald Trump – “a race between two really old white guys.”
“I think there is a real kind of excitement about the possibility of what Kamala Harris’ presidency represents,” Rigueur told ABC News. “And I think it’s also fair to say that it’s not simply that she is a woman or that she is Black or that she is Indian that is driving this enthusiasm, but instead the sensibility that … she’s refreshing; that she is new; that she is young, and that she’s not more of the same.”
But on the other hand, Brown said that like Obama, Harris has to strike a “balance” because in working to build the “rainbow coalition” she needs – one that includes independents and Trump-leaning voters – Harris is also navigating racism and the reality that some Americans are “not comfortable” with having a woman of color as president.
While “not more of the same” appeals to some voters, Brown said that for others, “it could be alienating.” This, according to Brown, is part of what informs why Harris has been focused on policy in her wider pitch to battleground state voters and has not centered the conversation around her own identity.
In her stump speeches and campaign ads so far, Harris has touted her middle-class roots – much like Obama did in 2008 – in an effort to connect with voters and make the case that she knows what it’s like to work hard, Brown said.
“She grew up in a middle-class home. She was the daughter of a working mom and she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree,” a Harris ad that touts her goals to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable says. “Being president is about who you fight for and she’s fighting for people like you.”
According to Rigueur, Harris’ strategy to focus on policy and the people, instead of the candidate, is guided by an understanding that there “is a burgeoning of a movement that sees Kamala Harris as its vehicle, not its endgame.”
“There is something novel about Kamala Harris, and it’s something that she has chosen not to emphasize in her campaign,” Rigueur said. “And I actually think that’s a smart decision [that] she’s chosen not to emphasize it, and she doesn’t need to emphasize it because it’s so apparent – it is the elephant in the room.”
‘The Obama effect’
According to Rigueur, Harris is also navigating a political landscape where “the Obama effect” is at play, where there is “an emotional difference” between new generations who grew up with a Black president, “as opposed to, say, my grandmother, who never thought that she would live to see a Black man become President of the United States.”
“I think this comes out too, in attitudes towards what people think about [when it comes to] change and progress,” Rigueur said.
Brown echoed this notion.
“People put their hopes and dreams, I think, unrealistically, on Obama, because there just wasn’t a large civic understanding about how politics works,” she said. “Just the symbolism of having the first Black president was enough for many people that they didn’t question or look into his policy preferences. And I think the difference today is, yeah, people, know.”
And this is what Brown, who is conducting research at the 2024 DNC this week, found through interviews with protesters about how they feel about a Harris presidency and whether her racial or gender identity is something that inspires them.
Brown said she was “surprised” by how many young people of color expressed that they “don’t care” about Harris’ identity and are instead concerned with her politics, particularly her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
“There’s a large number of people I’ve been surveying – talking to, here – who really disdain these boxes, right? They don’t want to, you know, identify as voting for a woman because they are a woman, and they want to talk about policy,” Brown said.
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Sunday, 38% of Americans say that having a woman serve as president would be a good thing for the country, far more than the 14% who see it as a bad thing. The rest, 47%, say it makes no difference.
The poll also found that support from Black people has swung by 12 points in Harris’ direction, from +60 for Biden in July to +72 for Harris now. But Brown said having a Black candidate is not enough – particularly in a post-Obama world.
“Black voters want more,” she said, adding that Harris’ strategy has shifted and she is “going down a different path” in 2024 than she did during her 2020 presidential campaign by making more efforts to speak authentically to Black voters.
“Being in communities with Black people like going to HBCUs, showing up at these Black civil rights organizing spaces, talking about black maternal health,” she added. “Some of these things are showing it’s not that I’m Black, but I actually am part of these communities.”
(PHILADELPHIA) — During Tuesday evening’s consequential ABC News presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized former President Donald Trump for what she says is his involvement in Project 2025, a 922-page playbook of controversial policy proposals put together by the Heritage Foundation intended to guide the next conservative administration.
Trump denied involvement in Project 2025, saying he had “nothing to do with it” and that he has not read it, despite the playbook being authored by dozens of former members of his administration, including former cabinet secretaries and West Wing aides.
Speaking at a Heritage event in April 2022, Trump said: “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do… when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
In the debate, Trump said, “I have nothing to do as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That is out there. I have not read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it.”
He attributed Project 2025 to a “group of people that got together.”
“They came up with some ideas, I guess, some good, some bad,” he said. “But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do. Everybody knows I’m an open book.”
Tying Trump to Project 2025 has been a big part of the Harris campaign strategy, and she’s already done so a few times during this debate. Polls have consistently shown the plan and its proposals are widely unpopular, so it’s no surprise that Trump is disavowing it yet again.