Taylor Swift wants you to vote today, but she won’t say for whom

Call it Super Tuesday (Taylor’s version).

After months of anticipation, Taylor Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election on Tuesday morning, encouraging her 282 million followers on Instagram to make a plan to vote during the presidential primaries.

The message was short and impartial, and contained no expressions of support. It targeted voters in the more than a dozen states and territories — including Tennessee, where she owns at least one home — that are holding primaries on Tuesday.

“I wanted to remind you to put the people who most represent YOU in power,” she wrote. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”

The message has the potential to provoke outrage at Fox News and among the fringes of the Make America Great Again contingent, which in recent months has promoted theories that Ms. Swift is part of an elaborate plot to spread Democratic propaganda — or to manipulate the Super Bowl. , or force people to get vaccinated against Covid-19, or do something else that is not entirely clear.

A person familiar with Ms. Swift’s plans said she had already voted by mail ahead of Tuesday’s election and is registered to vote in Tennessee.

Ms. Swift, known for hiding cryptic “Easter eggs” in her liner notes, lyrics and music videos, includes one mystery in her post. She points to Tennessee “and 16 other states and territories” holding primaries on Tuesday. Technically, fifteen states (and one territory) are holding primaries on Tuesday – but in theory you could also count Iowa, which is holding a Democratic caucus. (Vote.org also considers Iowa a voting state on Tuesday.)

Ms. Swift, 34, has not endorsed a candidate in the 2024 election. In 2020, she endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr., and she is high on his aides’ wish list for another endorsement this year.

For much of her career, Ms. Swift avoided politics or political statements. But in 2018, she endorsed two Tennessee Democrats: former Gov. Phil Bredesen, who ran for Senate against Marsha Blackburn, who was then a U.S. representative; and Jim Cooper, another House member who has since retired. At that time, she also began speaking out in support of LGBTQ rights.

Last September, on National Voter Registration Day, Ms. Swift took to Instagram to encourage her followers to register to vote, linking to Vote.org, the same nonprofit she linked to on Tuesday. That earlier post, which came as her ‘Eras’ concert tour took her to unprecedented heights of superstardom, led to a An increase of 35,000 registrations, much of which comes from young voters, the group reported.