CNN
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It was the Instagram recommendation that went viral: Pop superstar Taylor Swift is endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Swift’s post also urged her followers to register to vote.

Swift’s support for Harris and voter registration will likely have some impact, but not as much as some would hope. That said, Harris and the Democratic Party struggle with young voters and voter registration, so they’ll take any help they can get.

Let’s start with what we know about Swift’s post. More than 330,000 people were redirected to Vote.gov from Swift’s Instagram as of 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to the General Services Administration, which operates the site. A Google Trends investigation revealed a spike in searches for voter registration after Swift’s post, a Washington Post analysis found.

We know there was a surge in registrations when Swift made a similar post imploring people to register to vote in 2023. Voter registrations that day were up 23% compared to the same time the year before. That amounted to 35,252 total voter registrations nationwide.

These aren’t huge numbers, really. Let’s assume that all the people who clicked on Swift’s Vote.gov link registered to vote. That would amount to about 0.2% of turnout in 2020. Of course, only a fraction of those who clicked on the link will actually register and vote.

And the potential Swift bump comes as registered Republicans have closed the gap with registered Democrats in several key states in recent years. Check out the latest voter registration data reported by state officials in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — all battleground states where voters can register by party.

Since September 2020, Republicans have increased their margin in Arizona and significantly closed the gap with Democrats in other states, gaining more than 60,000 active voters in Nevada to nearly 400,000 active voters in Pennsylvania.

The spikes in voter registration we’ve seen in the past thanks to Swift’s endorsement campaigns wouldn’t be enough to offset these gains for the GOP.

Now Swift could help Harris among those already plan to vote. She had a 52 percent favorability rating among likely voters in a Grinnell College/Selzer poll released earlier this year. Her unfavorable rating was just 32 percent. That’s a net favorability rating of +20 points. A Fox News poll from last year showed the same.

While she may not be universally popular, she is far more popular than most politicians. Harris and former President Donald Trump have net favorability ratings closer to 0 points and -10 points, respectively.

Younger “Swifties” could also be useful for Harris.

The vice president is currently struggling, relatively speaking, with younger voters. A recent average of national polls shows her winning voters under 30 by 15 points. That’s better than President Joe Biden did when he dropped out of the race in July, but not by a huge margin. Biden had a 7-point lead.

Both Harris and Biden have fared worse among young voters this year compared to where Biden stood in September 2020. At that time, Biden had a 25-point lead among young voters. That lead would grow to 29 points in the final pre-election polls of 2020.

Swift won’t be able to close that gap on her own. Remember, she couldn’t convert her first major political endorsement (Democrat Phil Bredesen for Senate in 2018) into success at the ballot box. Bredesen lost by double digits.

But there’s no doubt that Swift is an asset to Harris and the Democrats, even if only on the margins.

We’re talking about an election that’s currently neck and neck in the national and swing state polls. Just swing a few voters to the Democrats and Harris might just be enough.