• 3 months ago
After pop superstar Taylor Swift announced she would be voting for Kamala Harris in the upcoming US presidential election, FRANCE 24's Delano D'Souza and Solange Mougin take a look at the impact that celebrity endorsements have on voters' choices. On Entre Nous, we find out how Swift has been effective in getting out the vote. We also dive into the cat lover, sexist and artificial intelligence aspects of her Instagram post.
This Entre Nous aired on Paris Direct, September 11, 2024. A programme produced by Amanda Alexander, Marina Pajovic and Georgina Robertson.

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Transcript
00:00American pop star Taylor Swift took to Instagram to explain her choice after watching the debate
00:04and doing her research she said. Through her music and social media Swift has an incredible reach.
00:10In the post she posted a picture with her cat and signed off as a childless cat lady. That comment
00:15of course taking direct aim at one made by Donald Trump's vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance.
00:21To discuss this further we can bring in France 24's Solange Mougin. Solange if this was an
00:26ordinary singer we would not be talking about it. But this is no ordinary singer. This is somebody
00:32who manages to boost the GDP of certain countries when her concerts take place. So this is a big
00:36deal isn't it? Yeah she is more than just a major celebrity. The fact that her Instagram post went
00:42out to over 280 million people, her followers, is indeed part of the puzzle of why this is so big.
00:48But her history of pleas to quote paint the town blue, to quote one of her lyrics,
00:53they are more significant than just throwing influence around. First if we look at Taylor
00:57Swift's persona. The country music and Americana music turned pop singer. Well she remains a very
01:02beloved person by both Republicans and Democrats. Like Dolly Parton her music is listened to
01:08on both sides of the aisle. Even if she has become more of a polarizing figure by being
01:14politically vocal on issues like abortion rights, like LGBT plus causes. Then there is the demographic
01:21element of this endorsement. She is huge among Generation Z and younger millennials. They are a
01:27powerful group in, they were a powerful group in the last election in favor of Biden. But Harris
01:32now has to mobilize young people as her numbers have not yet reached Biden's 2021s. Then there is
01:40what we know from previous endorsements by Taylor Swift. Last year over 35,000 people registered to
01:47vote on the day following one of her posts to do so. Before that in 2018 some 65,000 people they
01:55signed up to vote in the 24 hours following a Swift's call to vote for Democrats and congressional
02:02races in her home state of Tennessee which is a red and Republican state. Her candidates did not
02:08win but it did get a lot more people to the polls. The extent to which her backing prompts someone to
02:15vote for a candidate it's actually really quite hard to quantify this in general for all celebrity
02:20endorsements. But there are studies on the effect of celebrity endorsements on the whole as we just
02:25heard they are not thought to play a defining role. But a decade ago researchers at Northwestern
02:31they studied something that they call the Oprah effect and their research showed that the backing
02:36of Oprah Winfrey of Barack Obama in 2008 in primaries it was thought to have pushed a million
02:42voters in his favor. Then that is significant because he won against Hillary Clinton by a much
02:47smaller margin or some 270,000 votes in the primaries where that were being studied. As for
02:53Taylor Swift we can't know the figures at least yet we may never know but Kamala Harris's running
02:59mate Tim Walz he praised her courage and thanked her from one cat owner to another. Let's talk about
03:04cats for a second because Taylor Swift ended that Instagram post which is doing pretty well. I
03:10checked the likes recently. She said with love and hope Taylor Swift childless cat lady. What's
03:15this about? Yeah this is also a much. It's a dig. It is a dig it's shade and it is actually a much
03:22multi-layered response on her part. It refers to her love of cats. She has three of them including
03:27Benjamin Button who you see there who's in the photo with her. It's also a bit of throwing shade
03:32as we just said at JD Vance Trump's running mate. Three years ago on Fox News he said that Kamala
03:38Harris and also other top Democrats in Washington they were quote childless cat ladies who are
03:44miserable with their own lives and want to make the country miserable. Since then Vance has
03:49since then Vance has become the Republican VP and the video has resurfaced and gone viral.
03:54He has backtracked from that saying it was a joke but it has made a number of childless women and
04:01cat lovers quite angry. There's been ire over his using a sexist trope of stigmatizing women
04:08who choose or cannot have children not to mention getting Kamala Harris's family status wrong.
04:13She has two stepchildren who calls her they call her mama and here from a democratic demographics
04:19standpoint there could be some important movement too. For in the U.S. there are 22 million women in
04:25the United States between the ages of 20 and 39 that have not given birth. Of them about five
04:30million are thought to not have had a child either by choice or out of impossibility to do so
04:35and then on top of that there are the cat lovers for there are over 46 million pet cats in the U.S.
04:42Solange, besides Taylor Swift being a singer and a celebrity we should remind our viewers she's also
04:47a billionaire, a very self-made woman. Have there been reactions to this endorsement last night?
04:54Well I have mentioned Tim Walz's thanks from one cat lover to the next and we should expect more
04:59viral cat memes and Tay Tay love in the coming hours. Already in the 13 minutes following her
05:05post which came just after the debate there were a million likes. A number of celebrities have
05:10chimed in their support as well. On the conservative side there have been reactions to Elon Musk who's
05:16heavily supporting the Trump campaign. He wrote a quite bizarre in my view tweet, fine Taylor you win
05:22I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life end quote. Now personally I do not know
05:27what that means um who knows but as for Trump he said I quote have no idea when asked what he
05:34thought of Swift's endorsement of Kamala which is quite uh ironic or funny or you choose your
05:39adjective because he himself posted artificial intelligence images of Taylor Swift saying she
05:44was endorsing him and that there are many Swifties for Trump. These fake AI generated images are part
05:51of the reason that Swift said she was publicly coming out in favor of Harris because she wrote
05:57in the post quote the simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I just checked
06:03if that post has 7.1 million likes. Amazing. And counting. Thank you very much for that Solange Moujander.

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