Less than 24 hours after Taylor Swift broke her silence and expressed her support for presidential candidate Kamala Harris, she has spoken out again about voting.
At the end of her acceptance speech for Video of the Year for “Fortnight” at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards on Wednesday, Swift said, “The fact that this is a fan-voted award and you voted for it, I really appreciate it.”
Swift added: “And if you’re over 18, please register to vote for something else that’s about to matter a lot: the 2024 presidential election.”
The comment follows an Instagram post in which she supported Harris and her vice president. Governor Tim Walz of MinnesotaTheir support came shortly after the completion of the Presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump.
In the Instagram post, Swift wrote: “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes that I believe need a fighter to represent them.”
At the end of her speech, she called on first-time voters to register as voters.
“Remember you must be registered to vote!” she wrote. The megastar, who has 284 million followers on Instagram, added a link to her story where voters can register.
A spokeswoman for the General Services Administration told CNBC that her post brought at least 337,826 visitors to Vote.gov, a website where visitors can register to vote.
In addition to winning Video of the Year, Swift took home six other awards at the VMAs: Artist of the Year, Best Collaboration, Best Pop, Best Director, Best Editing and Song of the Summer for “Fortnight,” with Post Malone making a guest appearance.
With seven awards this year, Swift has now won a total of 30 VMA awards – and is tied with Beyoncé for the most VMA wins of all time.
A brief history of Swift’s political involvement
Swift stayed out of public politics until 2018, when she made an Instagram post supporting the Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee.
In “Miss Americana,” a 2020 Netflix documentary about her life, she said she had to speak out against Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee in the 2018 midterm elections.
“I have to be on the right side of history,” she said.
When Harris tweeted in 2020 that she was “honored” to be on the Democratic ballot alongside Joe Biden, Swift publicly celebrated her nomination by responding “YES” to the tweet.
Later that year, in October, she publicly endorsed Biden, explaining her reasons in an article in V Magazine’s Thought Leaders Issue and sharing a photo of herself holding “Biden Harris 2020” cookies on Twitter the same day the magazine came out.
Since then, she has condemned the overturning of Roe v. Wade, urged her fans to vote in the 2022 midterm elections, and inspired tens of thousands of new voters to register to vote in 2023.
A representative for Swift did not respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment outside of business hours.
