Qhen Taylor Swift emerges on stage at a sold-out Défense Arena in front of 40,000 fans on Thursday, she will begin, as at every concert of her Eras Tour, by “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”. “I have no more hope / I saw the score / My team loses / The bad guys congratulate themselves / American stories burn before me. » This is her most political song, which she wrote after Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. Eight years later, all the signals are red six months before the presidential election on November 5 for a falling Joe Biden. free in the polls among young people, weighed down by inflation and a pro-Gaza mobilization which is tearing American campuses apart.
Will Miss Americana come to the aid of the American president and mobilize his army of “swifties” to challenge Donald Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement? “If you’re Team Biden, of course you want Taylor Swift to support him and participate in his campaign in front of the cameras,” said former Republican Party spokesperson Doug Heyes. But this Francophile, who will be at the concert in Paris on Friday, recalls: “In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign had activated the power of the stars to the maximum”, from all of Hollywood to Beyoncé, “and that had no effect on him. not allowed to impose oneself.”
Trump on the rise among young people
Joe Biden has a problem with young people. Neck and neck with Donald Trump in the polls, the American president is making progress among seniors, who trust him more to protect their social security coverage. But it plunges almost incomprehensibly among those under 35. A poll for CNN published at the end of April even gives Donald Trump an 11-point lead among 18-34 year olds. Even considering only the voters most likely to vote, the two candidates are almost tied among 18-29 year olds, according to the latest study for the New York Times. A demographic that Joe Biden won by more than 20 points four years ago.
The explanations are multiple. First of all, a global trend that is still poorly understood, from South Korea to the United States, with young girls increasingly to the left and young men who are heading to the right. We must also take into account the inflation that Generation Z and millennials are particularly suffering from, for whom the American dream of becoming a homeowner seems more inaccessible every day with 30-year interest rates above 7%. Three out of four young people also judge that Biden, at 81, is too old and too disconnected from their concerns. And just as many disapprove of his management of the war in the Middle East and his support for Israel.
READ ALSO Can the pro-Gaza generation get Donald Trump elected? Faced with the pro-Gaza fever which is gaining momentum on American campuses, Joe Biden insisted: “Order must prevail. » While police in riot gear dislodged demonstrators in Columbia, New York and UCLA in Los Angeles, Democratic executives fear the worst for the party convention, which will be held in Chicago in mid-August. In 1968, in the same city, the Democratic convention was the scene of violent clashes between the police and youth demonstrating against the Vietnam War. With the withdrawal of Lyndon Johnson, the law and order candidate, Richard Nixon had largely dominated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in November. Biden wants to avoid history repeating itself.
Taylor Swift’s political awakening
Unlike Joe Biden, Taylor Swift has never been more popular. His tour is the first in history to exceed $1 billion in revenue, with more than 4 million tickets sold. With 284 million followers on Instagram, the 2023 personality of the year Time Magazine features an unrivaled megaphone. When Taylor Swift speaks, her fans listen.
READ ALSO How Taylor Swift turns fans’ heads with her ‘surprise songs’ For a long time, the singer kept her political opinions to herself. In the ultraconservative world of country music, she first adopted the doctrine of Michael Jordan: “Republicans also buy sneakers. » Or, for her, CDs. In 2003, she was 14 years old and her career was just taking off in Nashville when the group the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by country radio for denouncing the imminent invasion of Iraq and saying they were “shame” of George W. Bush.
In 2016, during the duel between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Taylor Swift simply appeared with a “voted” sticker, without saying for whom. But two years later, she directly opposed the Republican candidate for Senate in her state of Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, in particular to defend LGBTQ+ rights. “It’s Trump with a wig.” “She’s the kind of woman that men want us to be, as if it were 1950. Hiring me was the only choice,” she explained to her parents two years later, with tears in her eyes. eyes, in the documentary for Netflix Miss Americana.
In the accompanying single, “Only the Young”, she talks about school shootings, and the “big bad man”, a not really veiled allusion to Donald Trump. His move did not succeed. In an ultra-Republican state, Blackburn won by a margin of 10 points. A gap, however, twice as small as that which separated Trump and Clinton two years before.
My managers told me that a good girl doesn’t impose her opinions on others. A good girl smiles and says thank you. I became the person everyone wanted me to be. But I woke up […] and I had to be on the right side of history.Taylor Swift in 2018
Taylor Swift doesn’t stop. She officially supports Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 and lends her song “Only the Young” for a campaign music video. And when the Supreme Court revisits the Roe v. Wade, signing the end of federal legality of abortion, she shared a post from Michelle Obama, adding: “I am absolutely terrified that we are here – after decades of fighting for women to control their own bodies, the today’s decision deprives us of that. »
Political fever peaks this year during the Super Bowl. THE New York Times ensures that Biden’s team is courting official support from the singer. In a relationship with Kansas City Chiefs American football player Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift is boosting NFLV (National Football League) audiences and jersey sales. Little girls watch US football for the first time with their father, and conservative fans cry conspiracy. One in three Republicans say they are convinced that their relationship with Kelce, star of a Pfizer vaccination campaign against Covid and flu, is an influence operation set up from scratch by the Democratic Party to help Joe Biden. Clever, “Taytay”, as she is nicknamed, leaves room for sport and her boyfriend, crowned champion for the second consecutive year. Biden will wait.
The Oprah effect
Six months ago, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, was already calling out to journalists: “Taylor Swift is unique. What she has managed to accomplish in mobilizing young people and making them understand that they have a voice and a choice in the next election is powerful. »
Can stars really influence the electorate? All the experts insist: a choice in the voting booth never comes down to a single factor. “Celebrity endorsements attract a lot of media attention but generally bring few tangible benefits, and even fewer votes for a candidate,” says Doug Heye. However, he notes the exception of Frank Sinatra, who helped John F. Kennedy take off in the West Virginia primary.
READ ALSO US presidential election: polarization is not what you thinkAnd then we must not forget Oprah. According to one of the few scientific studies on the issue, Craig Garthwaite, professor of marketing at Northwestern University, concluded in 2013 that the support of star host Oprah Winfrey had brought more than a million additional votes to Barack Obama in 2008 during the Democratic primary, with “a significant effect” in his victory against Hillary Clinton. Oprah, however, actively participated in the campaign and was not content with a simple call to vote for Obama.
For Biden, the problem is different. Taylor Swift is not going to convince a Republican to switch sides. “But it could have a significant effect on the registration of young people on the electoral lists and on their participation,” estimates David Jackson, professor of political science at Bowling Green University, who established a link between the singer’s commitment against misogyny and the rise in its popularity among students. In October 2018, 65,000 people signed up to the lists within 24 hours of a call from Taylor Swift, 10 times more than the daily average for the previous month. And last year, registrations during “Voter Registration Day” increased by 23% compared to the previous year after the publication of a post by the singer on Instagram.
A possible impact in tight states
Traditionally, young people vote less than their elders. In 2020, the participation of 18-25 year olds was 48%, compared to more than 70% among those over 65. And in an election between an octogenarian and another who is approaching it, the temptation is great for young people to stay at home or turn to an alternative candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or the green Jill Stein.
The Beacon Center, a libertarian think tank, attempted to measure the potential impact of Taylor Swift in Tennessee for the senatorial and presidential elections in November. One in three people say they are a fan, and among these, 12% would be more likely to vote for a candidate supported by the singer. That is to say a maximum effect – undoubtedly generous – of 4%. “An endorsement from Taylor Swift wouldn’t make an impact in Tennessee, but if the numbers are similar across the rest of the country, it could make a huge difference in a swing state », Estimates Mark Cunningham, spokesperson for the Beacon Center. Four years ago, for example, three states were decided by fewer than 20,000 votes. A gap that an increase in participation of those under 30 of 2 or 3 points could, on paper, be enough to tip in favor of Biden.
Does Taylor Swift want to go into battle and take blows to galvanize voters on abortion alongside Kamala Harris by singing to Donald Trump “You need to calm down, you’re being too loud” ( “You need to calm down, you’re talking too loud”)? The American artist is traveling across Europe until August 20, but her schedule is then free until mid-October, less than three weeks before the election. And then if Donald Trump wins, she will always be able to tell her pain in her next album.
