Taylor Swift and Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy are providing an example of what reaching across the aisle can look like.
Swift sent Portnoy a handwritten thank you note for “having her back” when he was asked about his thoughts on her endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Portnoy has been vocally supportive of former President Donald Trump for president.
When asked what he thought of Swift’s endorsement, he responded, “I don’t care at all. People can vote for whoever they want in this country. How somebody votes will never change my opinion of a person. I’m voting the other way but to each their own,” Portnoy wrote on X in September.
Wearing an Eras Tour T-shirt and multiple friendship bracelets during an Instagram video post, Portnoy revealed the note, which featured a hand-drawn star and a wax label with a 13, that he received after attending one of Swift’s shows in Miami over the weekend.
“I wanted to say thank you for always being so supportive, so loyal, and for having my back when a lot of people didn’t,” the note read.
He explained that the note was hand-delivered to him by Swift’s brother, Austin Swift.
The note was simple and supportive. It didn’t try to change his mind or shame him for having a different opinion than her own. He said that when he met Swift’s mother, Andrea, she gave him a hug and said that “being a Swiftie is all about love.”
Portnoy ended his Instagram video calling for his followers to “practice love.”
Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president
In September, Swift revealed who she will be voting for on Nov. 5 for president, and it’s not Donald Trump, despite AI depictions of Swift falsely endorsing Trump’s presidential run. She also urged her more than 284 million followers to register to vote and to vote early, if possible.
More than 337,000 people have visited Vote.gov using the link Swift shared in her Instagram story, according to data in a release from Final Round AI.
Minutes after the first presidential debate on Sept. 10, Swift posted on Instagram that she would voting for Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz because Harris “fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
She continued, “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.”
Stevie Nicks referenced Swift in a post she shared urging people to register to vote, and signed it off as “Childless Dog Lady.”
“As my friend @taylorswift13 so eloquently stated, now is the time to research and choose the candidate that speaks to you and your beliefs. Only 54 days left until the election. Make sure you are registered to vote! Your vote in this election may be one of the most important things you ever do. Vote.gov.”
Potential election impacts of a Harris endorsement from Taylor Swift
A poll conducted by Newsweek in May showed that 22% of voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020 said “they would be more likely to vote for a GOP candidate in an election if Swift endorsed them,” while 16% of voters who backed Trump “said they’d be more likely to vote for a Democrat candidate endorsed by Swift.”
“Taylor Swift, she is the biggest celebrity in the world who a heck of a lot of people look up to. It matters. It’ll matter in close states,” David Thomas, a Democratic strategist and former aide to then-Vice President Al Gore, told The Hill.
Swift has significant influence on millennials and Gen Z. Swift is active on social media and communicates with her fans through the platform that those generations consume the most media on.
“Her fan base probably aren’t the type of people that are going to watch this debate all the way through. They don’t get their views from legacy media. They get a lot of their information on social; they get it on Instagram, they get it on TikTok,” Cayce Myers, a professor of public relations and director of graduate studies at Virginia Tech’s school of communication, told The Hill. “So if she’s speaking about political issues in that forum, they are going to get their news potentially from her.”
However, a Swift endorsement is not an election win guarantee.
The first time Swift made a major public political statement was in 2018, and she urged voters to look into the record of Republican Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
She told her fans she planned to vote for Democrats Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for Blackburn’s seat. Cooper lost to Blackburn in the election.
Harris-Walz campaign response to Taylor Swift endorsement
The announcement was not coordinated with the Harris-Walz campaign, but shortly after the announcement, the campaign store released Swift-themed campaign friendship bracelets that sold out within minutes, according to The Associated Press.
Harris also walked off stage at a debate watch party to Swift’s feminist anthem song, “The Man.”
Trump-Vance campaign response to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris
Swift signed off her post calling herself a “childless cat lady” — referencing a phrase Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, once used referring to Democrats.
Trump was asked about the endorsement on Fox News on Sept. 11, and said Swift is a “very liberal person” and that she will “she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” per CNN.
Taylor Swift’s impact on voting and voter registrations
It’s not the first time Swift has urged fans to vote and register to vote. On National Voter Registration Day in 2023, she directed fans to register to vote, leading to 35,252 new registrations — a 23% jump over 2022, Deseret News reported.
When Swift shared her post endorsing Cooper in 2018, she also encouraged her young fans to register to vote. Following her announcement, analysts observed a significant spike in voter registrations in the age groups of 18 to 24 and 25-39, per BuzzFeed News.
“We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift’s post,” said Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for Vote.org, told BuzzFeed News.
Taylor Swift has spoken out against Donald Trump before
Swift has come out with strong phraseology surrounding the former president before.
Here are the times Swift has criticized Trump and other political leaders in the past:
- Oct. 7, 2018: Swift wrote in an Instagram post, “I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love. Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn.”
- Aug. 23, 2019: Swift called Trump’s presidency an “autocracy” and shared that she considers herself “pro-choice” and said she would have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in an interview with The Guardian.
- Aug. 26, 2019: During her MTV Video Music Award acceptance speech, she called on viewers to sign a petition to get the Equality Act passed, saying that “it now has a half a million signatures, which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House,” per Billboard.
- Jan. 31, 2020: Swift revealed how she unpacked her decision to speak out about politics in deciding to share her thoughts on Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn. “I can’t see another commercial (with) her disguising these policies behind the words ‘Tennessee Christian values.’ I live in Tennessee. I am Christian. That’s not what we stand for,” she said in her Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.” She also released a song that features a children’s choir on backup vocals, “Only The Young,” for the film. She revealed how she wrote the song after the 2018 midterm elections in an interview with Variety when it was released, Billboard reported.
- May 29, 2020: “We will vote you out in November,” Swift tweeted in response to Trump sharing a tweet flagged for “glorifying violence” — a tweet that referred to protests that broke out after the unlawful killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. Swift’s tweet started, “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?”
- Oct. 7, 2020: Swift announced she endorsed Biden and Harris for the election. “The change we need most is to elect a president who recognizes that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented, that women deserve the right to choose what happens to their bodies, and that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be acknowledged and included,” she told V Magazine.