Page 16 - Florida Sentinel 10-12-18

2018 General Election
Voter Registrations Skyrocket After Taylor Swift's Get-Out-The-Vote Push
Voter registrations among young Americans shot up in the wake of pop megastar Taylor Swift's Instagram post urging her 112 million followers to get out the vote.
Swift's Sunday night mis- sive, in which she also en- dorsed two Tennessee Democrats, catapulted the generally apolitical singer into the fray ahead of the No- vember midterms. New data from Vote.org show Swift's voice is already making an impact.
The nonprofit group said nearly 65,000 Americans ages 18 to 29 registered to vote in the roughly 24 hours after the singer-songwriter's social media rallying cry.
By noon on Tuesday, that number grew to more than 102,000 — about 70 percent of which came from voters below the age of 25.
That surge in young regis- trations far exceeded the combined total of every other age group in the roughly 48- hour time period, in which about 64,000 Americans ages 30 and up registered.
Swift targeted young Americans in her lengthy
message. "So many intelli- gent, thoughtful, self-pos- sessed people have turned 18 in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count," she wrote, noting that Ten- nessee's voting registration deadline was fast approach- ing.
Tennessee is among 14 states with voter-registration deadlines Tuesday.
Taylor Swift breaks po- litical silence, endorses De- mocrats 9:41 AM ET Mon, 8 Oct 2018 | 00:40
Vote.org attributed the spike in young-voter num- bers to Swift's Instagram message.
"Taylor's post has helped bring out young voters," the nonprofit said in a statement. "We're especially happy to see that because we know voting is habit-forming."
In Swift's home state of Tennessee, registrations in just the first eight days of Oc- tober have already blown past every other month in 2018. More than 5,000 Ten- nesseans registered in Octo- ber by Tuesday at noon, more than twice as many as
the next-highest month of September, which saw 2,811 registrations.
The spike placed Ten- nessee as the state with the ninth-highest numbers since Sunday, with 6,217 registra- tions overall. Texas, which has roughly four times the population of Tennessee, took the top spot with 31,307 registrations.
Swift had long declined to endorse or denounce spe- cific political candidates — a position that irked some po- litical activists. But in her In- stagram message Sunday, Swift wrote that "I feel dif- ferently about that now."
The post urged Tennessee
voters to vote for Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate over his GOP challenger, Marsha Blackburn, in the Nov. 6 elections. Both candi- dates are angling to fill the seat of Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who is not running for re-election. Swift also endorsed incumbent Demo- cratic Rep. Jim Cooper.
Trump: Let's say that I like Taylor Swift's music about 25% less now 5:37 PM ET Mon, 8 Oct 2018 | 02:33 Swift's post supporting De- mocrats contrasts with the views of hip hop veteran Kanye West, a vocal sup- porter of President Don- ald Trump and a self-styled
iconoclast who is set to meet with the president later this week. West donned a red "Make America Great Again" hat and railed against the cast of "Saturday Night Live" during his Sept. 29 guest appearance on the weekly sketch show.
West infamously rushed the stage of the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards during Swift's acceptance speech for the Best Female Video award, grabbing the micro- phone and yelling, "Yo, Tay- lor, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Bey- once had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!"
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