Monmouth University Polling Institute-a centre for the study of public opinion at a private university in West Long Branch, New Jersey- released the results of a recent poll on 14 February 2024. Interviews, conducted between 8 and 12 February, of a “probability-based national random sample of 902 adults age 18 and older” had yielded some interesting results. While 68 per cent of respondents approved of singer Taylor Swift’s efforts to encourage her fans to vote in the upcoming presidential election, 46 per cent of the same cohort had also heard that she was part of a covert government effort to help Joe Biden win the election, and 18 per cent actually believed in a “Taylor Swift PsyOp conspiracy”. Unsurprisingly, 71 per cent of those who subscribed to this conspiracy had Republican sympathies, and 83 per cent supported Donald Trump.
A conspiracy theory that identifies Taylor Swift as part of a President Biden re-election plot has been brewing for some months among MAGA Republicans and supportive figures from the far-right, who apparently feel threatened by her undoubted popularity and her political sympathies. According to these conspiracy theorists, Swift’s relationship with her latest boyfriend Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, is part of a psychological operations plot to improve Biden’s electoral prospects for the 2024 Presidential election. Both Swift and Kelce reportedly “share similar values,” which are aligned with the liberal end of the spectrum.
America’s newest celebrity power couple helped boost the viewing figures for Super Bowl LVIII at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on 11 February. Swift even celebrated on the field after the Kansas City Chiefs overcame the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime. According to average estimates from audience measurement firm Nielsen, around 123.7 million viewers tuned in for the annual league championship game of the National Football League (NFL), making it the most-watched telecast in American history since the broadcast of Apollo 11’s Moon landing in 1969. Consumer insights and data company Numerator determined from a flash poll that 20 per cent of Super Bowl viewers rooted for the Chiefs only because of Swift’s relationship with Kelce.
Ex-President Trump, with an eye on the popular vote, would, without doubt, be happy for Swift’s support, and declared as much in a post before the Super Bowl. He noted that Swift would be “disloyal” if she did not support Trump, given that she had benefited from the Music Modernization Act 2018, which updated royalty and licensing rules for digital music providers and was passed by Congress with bipartisan support during the Trump presidency.
Taylor Swift herself needs little introduction to many of us, but for those unfamiliar, a few words about the versatile and influential singer-songwriter, with a growing army of supporters or “Swifties,” will not come remiss. Taylor Alison Swift was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, on 13 December 1989, to affluent parents, who named her after singer-songwriter James Taylor. She spent her early years in Pennsylvania on an 11-acre Christmas-tree farm, and started taking vocal and acting lessons in New York City from the age of nine. Her father relocated to Nashville’s Merrill Lynch office, to help launch her country music career, when she was 14. She signed with Big Machine Records in 2005 as a country singer, and her eponymous debut album was released in October 2006. Her fifth studio album, ‘1989’ (the year of her birth), in October 2014, marked her complete transition from country music to pop, which had begun with the preceding album, ‘Red’, in 2012. She signed with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records in November 2018.
Swift’s career is one of superlatives. She became the first country music artist to win an MTV Video Music Award in September 2009, and was the first artist to sell over one million copies of four albums within the first week on Billboard 2000. In 2010, she became the youngest artist ever to win Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Her lucrative and record-breaking concert tours touched new heights in 2023 when the US leg of ‘The Eras’ tour made more than $780 million, and the concert film grossed more in ticket sales than any other such film in North America. Swift was named Time Person of the Year in 2023. This year, she has become the first-ever artist to win four Grammy Awards for Record of the Year- part of a total of 14 Grammys. Swift has indeed become the top-selling digital artist in music history, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion according to Bloomberg News as of October 2023.
Swift is known for writing songs about her ex-boyfriends, seventeen of whom were identified in an Elle magazine timeline feature on 12 February 2024, for her frequent use of the number 13, and the many literary references in her song lyrics. When it comes to politics, Swift came out in support of the Democratic Party as far back as October 2018 and she endorsed Biden for the Presidency in 2020. Her progressive views are reflected in her support for anti-racism, anti-sexism, pro-choice, and pro-LGBTQ initiatives, while her generosity finds an outlet in her charitable support for education, disaster relief, food banks, sexual assault survivors, cancer patients, the music community, and many other worthy causes.
Taylor Swift is no stranger to conspiracies. As early as 2016 or thereabouts, the tall, blonde, and blue-eyed singer, supposedly blessed with “Nordic blood”, was being celebrated as an “Aryan Goddess” and identified as a covert Nazi in white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and alt right circles. Swift has since clarified her position and has declared her distaste for white supremacism. We do, however, live in a time when celebrity endorsements of mainstream political leaders and movements are actively solicited and do matter. It does seem that Taylor Swift’s support for the Democrats is something that Donald Trump would love to harness for his own re-election project, despite his supporters’ backing for the PsyOp conspiracy.
Ashis Banerjee