For the first time in her career, Taylor Swift posted a political endorsement to her 112 million Instagram followers last Sunday.
In the post, she wrote:
"In the past, I've been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now."
A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on
She later wrote that she cannot support Tennessee congressional candidate Marsha Blackburn, and instead, lent her support to Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives.
She also urged voters to register and added a link to Vote.org
In the days following her post, a slew of headlines came out stating that Swift's post had led to hundreds of thousands of voter registrations.
THE QUESTION
Was Taylor Swift's Instagram post the cause of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations last week?
THE ANSWER
Not directly. What is true is that Vote.org reported record turnout on their site and saw that 328,000 new voters had registered on their site in the 48 hours after Swift's post. That said, those numbers cannot be directly attributed to Taylor Swift as they weren't tracked or specified.
WHAT WE FOUND
Vote.org spokesperson Janelle Grai told VERIFY that the numbers can't directly be attributed to Taylor Swift.
"We're only able to track registrations directly if we work with someone in advance and they use a special link," she wrote. "In this case, there's been so much coverage on social and in the press that even that wouldn't have helped."
While Grai said Swift couldn't be directly linked, she did explain that the numbers following the post were impressive.
"We're seeing a massive surge in the 18-24 and 25-29 voters, which is her fan demographic," Grai wrote. "The 18024 number almost doubled overnight."
Based on numbers supplied by Voted.org, as of the writing of this article, 434,763 new voters had registered on their site since Swift's post Sunday and 65% of those registrants were under 30.