Attacking Taylor Swift won’t win conservatives young voters

Taylor Swift is a problem again.

After the 2016 election, a sustained campaign from the left attacked Swift for her alleged silence on politics. Progressive cultural critics accused her of being MAGA-adjacent – or even a Trump supporter. Now, everything has changed: Right-wing online influencers trumpet a theory that the Swift phenomenon is somehow a “psyop” by the political left that will culminate in Swift’s endorsement of Joe Biden.

This Very Online campaign against Taylor Swift may represent cultural anxieties more than political calculation. Instrumental for Donald Trump’s ascent in Republican politics was the fear that conservatives had lost ground in American culture. That worry about a pop-culture rout gave his raw celebrity an added luster.

Taylor Swift is a supernova. Her on-going Eras Tour has reportedly grossed over $1 billion so far, in addition to inspiring a hit film. She was named Time’s “person of the year” in December. And her boyfriend (Travis Kelce) just happens to be playing in the upcoming Super Bowl. Swift’s career trajectory also highlights conservative concerns about “losing” the culture.

She migrated from country to pop, and her fanbase (including millennial women and suburbanites) has shifted left over the past decade in a way that matches Swift’s own arc. By the 2018 midterms, Swift had abandoned her official political neutrality to endorse Democrats in congressional races. She also supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Its’s no surprise, then, that online right-wing influencers have gone into a frenzy over Swift. She exemplifies a generational challenge facing the political right. Yet the fixation on Swift might be a trap in more ways than one.

It’s not clear how many electoral battalions Taylor Swift actually commands (something that Biden fans might also remember). Celebrity endorsements more often reinforce dug-in partisans than sway undecided voters. When Swift endorsed Biden in 2020, it did not noticeably affect his numbers.

The leftward swing of young people – especially young women – is a legitimate concern for center-right parties across the world. However, conservative parties might be better off coming up with an integrated policy program and media message to address the underlying issues that have driven this generational and gendered polarisation.

For instance, making family-formation more affordable by increasing incomes and reducing costs (such as housing and health care) could help renew faith in the market economy. In much of the Western world, the atomisation of young people has fueled apocalyptic political movements and radical political ideologies. Making it easier to settle down and get married can help calm those cultural torrents.

Fixating on Taylor Swift rather than laying out an agenda that speaks to the worries of young people would be a missed electoral opportunity. It might also be counterproductive. While Swift is not as non-aligned as in the past, she has so far avoided being defined by her politics. She may understand how limiting it can be for an artist to be pigeonholed as a political brand. Because Swift remains broadly popular with the American public, an anti-Swift crusade could further isolate the right from the cultural mainstream.

Swift’s musical career has moved from white-picket-fence dreams to social-media beefs and wrecked relationships to, at last, the fateful question: Will she be able to shake off 20-something drama and grow into a more mature womanhood? This is a question facing many young people today, and it’s one with public-policy stakes.

For the political coalition that can address this question, a politics built around “growing up” could reap major rewards. Conversely, a politics of aggrieved social-media feuds might instead be another blank space.

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