Less than 24 hours after breaking her silence to endorse her support for Vice President Kamala Harris, Taylor Swift has spoken out about voting again.
At the end of her acceptance speech for winning video of the year for “Fortnight” at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards on Wednesday, Swift said: “The fact that this is a fan-voted award and you voted for this, I appreciate it so much.”
Swift added, “And if you are over 18, please register to vote for something else that’s very important coming up: the 2024 presidential election.”
The comment came on the heels of an Instagram post on Tuesday in which she endorsed Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. Her backing came shortly after the conclusion of the presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump.
In the Instagram post, Swift wrote: “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
She ended the post by encouraging prospective first-time voters to register.
“Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered!” she wrote. The megastar, who has 284 million followers on Instagram, added a link on her story where voters could register.
A spokesperson from the General Services Administration told CNBC that her post drove at least 337,826 visitors to Vote.gov, a website where people can register to vote.
In addition to winning video of the year, Swift took home six other awards at the VMAs: artist of the year, best collaboration, best pop, best direction, best editing, and song of the summer for “Fortnight,” which features Post Malone.
With seven awards in the bag this year, Swift now has a total of 30 VMA awards — and she ties with Beyoncé for most VMA wins.
A brief history of Swift’s political involvement
Swift publicly stayed out of politics until 2018, when she wrote a post on Instagram endorsing Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee.
In “Miss Americana,” a 2020 Netflix documentary about her life, she said she needed to speak out against the Tennessee Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn in the 2018 midterm elections.
“I need to be on the right side of history,” she said.
In 2020, after Harris tweeted that she was “honored” to join Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, Swift publicly celebrated the nomination by replying to the tweet with: “YES.”
Later that year, in October, she publicly endorsed Biden. She explained why in an article in V Magazine’s Thought Leaders Issue and shared a photo of herself on Twitter holding “Biden Harris 2020” cookies the same day the issue was published.
Since then, she has gone on to denounce the overturning of Roe v. Wade, urged fans to vote in the 2022 midterm elections, and inspired tens of thousands of new voters to register in 2023.
A representative for Swift did not respond to requests for comment sent outside business hours.
