Listened to the actual interview. No, there was not a 400% - 500% increase in registrations. There was that much increase in interest i.e. going to the website. We don't actually know how many of those people actually registered.
Even if it’s 25% depending on where the person is located can make a huge difference. I’m kinda worried a large percentage is in CA… Vote people like your rights depend on it.
Which numbers suggest that? Some of these numbers come from a firm called TargetSmart but it’s not clear they have access to this kind of data. And how would they?
They're making a joke about the phrase "Which numbers suggest that?" By taking it literally and implying that numbers themselves are offering their opinions. Like the number 17 saying "I think it's great!"
They don't have access to that kind of data. It looks like their numbers are actually just counting how many total people used their API which powers the "click here to check the status of your voter registration" feature on vote.org et al. And possibly tracking any resulting registrations from that, maybe.
Responsible outlets are just reporting this story as "Tswift helps drive interest in voter registrations" or "voter registrations increase in the wake of debate and Tswift endorsement". Without claiming causation.
If you send a spam email, the expected conversion you'd expect is about 2%.
Since this is legitimate interest, we can expect a much higher conversion (people actually registering). I don't know what the average / expected conversion rate is, I just know it for spam emails but it's surprising how often that gives a decent idea
Usually people filter out these statistics to remove instant-bounces. At the very least it is easy to do if they want to and have all the analytics data.
This isn’t true though. An average day according to semrush estimates right now are around 130k daily organic views for vote.gov. Around the same time as the debate + Swifts endorsements it rose to around 380k (last I checked).
A nice jump - but honestly still a drop in the bucket.
None of these numbers even really make sense, since 30k to 400k is an increase of 1330% in traffic, where do they get the 400-500% from? Sounds like an assumption of "If even a quarter or half of these people registered, that would be an increase in daily registrations of 400-500%".
Total registrations, with no data other than the timeframe to suggest any relation to the Swift endorsement (which happened almost immediately after the debate, when a zillion other sources were also encouraging people to register.)
It would be ridiculous to suggest that the debate itself and the ensuing commentary from all other sources didn't factor into that increase. The data company isn't claiming that. https://x.com/targetsmart
I care because facts, data literacy, media literacy, etc matter?? Why are you defending misleading clickbait and/or outright lies? I love Dolly Parton's child literacy program and I'm confident that it has had positive effects, but I'm not gonna be happy if someone lies and says she singlehandedly quadrupled childhood literacy rates, when there's zero data to support that.
It's two completely different data points. Traffic from Taylor Swift's instagram link to vote.gov was trackable. We know how many clicks went to vote.gov from her link. It's a lot of clicks, and it's great that she's had a positive role in driving interest in voter registration. All of those clicks did not lead to registrations. Many were likely from people not even eligible to vote. But it's reasonable to assume some new registrations came from her link. We don't actually know how many.
Targetsmart's API does not interface with Swift's vote.gov link referral data in any way. Anything they are seeing is the combined effects of all the factors driving interest in voter registration after a (historically starkly contrasting) presidential debate.
On top of that, someone downthread actually just corrected that it's not even new voter registrations that the graph is referring to, it's people using their API via sites like vote.org to check on the status of their voter registration. Some will have proceeded to register, but plenty will have already been registered with no issues to resolve.
Can we also realize that her endorsement also came immediately after one of the highest viewed Presidential debates in history? (nearly 60M people watching)... so, was it her post purely or a result of the eyes on the debate as well?
I'm not talking about the link to the article. I'm talking about how you would track that an Instagram post is the source of an influx of traffic, especially since that post was made alongside a related television event that had 60M people watching it. Nowhere did Taylor link 'vote.org' or any other website directly within HER post... which means on the receiving end of the traffic, you cannot see it.
I have no doubt that her post has an impact. As a person who has made a living in marketing technology and analytics... I'm just aware of ways that data like this can be interpreted...
You have 0 data to base that extrapolation from. The traffic on its own is not enough to make an informed conclusion, depending on the blockers of the process the post-landing conversion rate will vary a lot.
It could be that, it could be more, it could be less.
Vote.gov gets around 130k views a day on the low end. According to semrush estimates. 380-400k is a nice little bump. But not nearly as substantial to say there was likely a 500% voter registration increase lol
Thank you for clarifying.. all that being said, 400 - 500% increase in traffic to a website that provides information to folks about registering to vote is exactly what we need. I don't care who you want to vote for, just get involved
If anyone watched that debate and thought “Yep, that dude who said immigrants are eating pets is my guy,” I’d really prefer they just don’t get involved.
Yeah, we're supposed to say "I don't care who you vote for, just vote," but it's pretty fuckin clear at this point that one of those options is a horrendously bad idea.
Because of the demographics not voting, the percentage of younger adults (also statistically more left leaning) is much higher than that of older boomers (statistically conservative). as turnout goes up, the higher the percentage of dem votes
I do, actually. I live in a small, very red county in Texas. No young person's vote is actually going to matter here in terms of our local or state representatives.
That said, our town's population has been in significant decline since right before 9/11, according to a census graph from Google. Which means these kids are doing the smart thing and getting the hell out of here.
Away from their parents, away from this rural bubble, and off to college or anywhere else where they will meet new people and live through new experiences.
They may just vote in step with their parents for their first election. I know I did. But what is far, far more critical is getting them to vote for the first time. You are exceedingly more likely to become a lifelong voter after voting just one time.
I'll gladly take the gamble of encouraging young people to vote as an investment towards the future. Texas suppresses voter registration for a reason. When more people vote, those new voters vote Democrat far more than they do Republican.
When I worked at the local grocery store as an assistant manager, I made sure to ask and allow everyone in my department an opportunity to clock out and go vote on election day. I told them I wasn't going to tell them how to vote, just that they do.
My best year was 16 young baggers and cashiers. I genuinely hope most of them have continued voting, no matter how they voted that first year.
I think there's a decent argument that Democrats could probably mean it, because:
A) it's mostly about younger voters that tend to not vote and might need a "reminder" to do so
B) statistically speaking, younger voters are far more likely to vote for democrats (like 2020, Biden got close to 60% of the votes of the 18-29 age bracket and still 55% of the 30-49 age bracket and similarly in 2016, 58% of 18-29 year olds voted for Clinton)
I don’t care who you vote for, just vote for a major party candidate who is not a threat to end American democracy for all time, and who has not promised to become a dictator on day one.
I care what people vote for, but I'd still encourage everyone who can vote to vote, mainly because I suspect most people who don't currently vote would be more likely to vote for the candidate I prefer.
Polls indicate that the majority of people who saw the debate thought kamala won, so probably most people who saw it and decided to register want to vote for the person they think won. And the part of the increase which happened because tswift endorsed kamala probably supports kamala as well. Like, shouldn't we support everyone who has any opinion on either voting because overwhelmingly they're leaning democrat?
That reminds me of the time I got the nickname "Truckstop the Toilet Destroyer". It all began the night before with a Crave Case of jalapeño Sliders, a 40 of malt liquor, and a pint of tequila...
First of all, every vote counts, if some votes should be excluded because you want to - it's not a democracy.
Second, democrats win through pure statistics, so more people y'all bring to vote, more likely that you'll get a Blue Wave, knocking reps out of all branches and then even from SCOTUS.
Given their object of celebrity worship endorsed Harris, I'd put at least 60% of them as registering democrat, of those that actually register. Maybe another 10% going independent, and of course, 30% being the stupid people who make up headcanons that Taylor Swift is secretly a republican that agrees with them playing 4D chess.
At times I feel like I know more about American politics than my own country, partially because of Reddit but also because my country has over 20 parties so it takes a lot more work to figure out who to vote for.
Why is this still the approach. I don’t think “I love voting so much I don’t care who you vote for” makes a lot of sense when one of the options is a guy who said “if I win you won’t have to vote anymore.”
It's obvious when you look at demographics. Look at how the country is made up and where Republicans get elected. Densely populated cities vote Democrats and podunk sparsely populated areas like Montana vote Republican. More votes = more Democratic policies
Well I'm just pointing out that it's not really any of my business. I hope and pray that Harris and Walz give us the best 8 years of our lives and stop this absolute madness.
But when you absolutely count heads, there are more of us. We're just not really great about doing much about it. A vast number of democratic leaning thinkers are between the ages of 18-35 that also comes with ignorance in the process coupled with not really into being told what to do.
I don't think I need to insult anyone's intelligence by telling them what to believe. I feel it's better to help them understand that they can have an opinion and use the power of voting to help make this country we share a place where they feel integral to its success. If you want my opinion, ask me. I'm not going to force it on anyone.
This. If the country gets fucked, and everyone voted, I can painfully live with that. If the country gets fucked because everyone that could vote didn't, I will be rightfully pissed off.
Since Taylor Swift is an artist listened to internationally, there's a good chance many people that visited the link to register weren't American anyway, just wanted to have a look at the link she posted. So the increase in traffic doesn't mean much imo
How much of that traffic is international, though. That is, people like me who aren't American or have ever set foot in the U.S. who just wanted to see what this voter registration thing Taylor Swift was promoting was all about.
Or how much of it was by underaged fans. All in all the statement is very vague.
But Taylor cares, and I doubt most people following her and being directly heavily influenced by her are voting with profound reasoning and levels of research so as to be considered of a neutral, independent mind.
I think it was a responsible statement, especially with as divisive as things are today. Look at the reaction, she hasn't even said, "If you vote for them you're obviously insane" (which is true) yet people like Megyn Kelly are literally swearing and shouting disgusting things to her. Then the richest weirdo freak of nature is sexually harassing her in front of the entire planet like it's a game. She can't afford to be honest for her own safety.
If you see down the article a little there is an update that states
: According to data firm TargetSmart, Swift’s endorsement has led to a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration — between 9,000-10,000 people per hour.
yeah i feel like no one is considering the fact that a lot of the internet traffic with big pop stars comes from south america, india, philippines, rest of the world etc. the amount of americans who hit the website and registered cannot really be determined from the percent increase of the number of clicks. it's not all or probably even most american followers who clicked the link.
People are also bad with numbers. If 300k visited when normally 30k did. That isn't 400-500% increase in traffic that is 1k% increase in traffic. If 400k visited that day, that is 1300%+ increase in daily traffic. If a third of that 1300% registered, you are looking at 300%+ in registration, assuming the same ratio of people that click on the link vs. following through with registration. While taking into account international clicks is an important aspect to consider.
The conservative party has traditionally made voting as difficult as possible. They fight every effort to increase participation. You can count on them to try to shorten the early voting window, reduce polling stations in blue districts, and resist making election day a national holiday, even though it's always on a Tuesday.
One of the more insidious obstructions is requiring ID to vote. Getting ID requires money (although they will deny this) and time. You have to acquire your documents. I just got a copy of my birth certificate for passport purposes. It cost $40 and took over a month to arrive. Then you have to go to the DMV, department of motor vehicles, for a license or state ID. The average wait time at the outskirts of Raleigh is 6 hours. If I can drive to another county, it might only be an hour. But maybe I live in the city center and don't gave a car. Maybe I work 2 or 3 part time jobs and am barely scraping by. Missing a full work shift would hurt. And ID is not needed. You already have to tell the poll worker your name and address, which they check against the register. To vote falsely, you would have to know someone's address and be certain they aren't going to vote, so you don't get caught. Virtually no voter fraud occurs this way, and when it does, it's usually Republicans voting for a dead relative.
"As reported by Elizabeth Wagmeister (a CNN entertainment correspondent) and Betsy Klein (CNN’s Senior White House Producer), 405,999 people were referred to Vote.gov directly from Swift’s Instagram page. Such a number dwarfs the website’s usual traffic, which averages about 30,000 visitors per day."
"UPDATE: According to data firm TargetSmart, Swift’s endorsement has led to a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration — between 9,000-10,000 people per hour."
Yes, and I prefer this version, as it may be that those people visiting the website are already registered. Because the alternative is grim : that many people starting to get interest in their civic duty until after their idol do something in that sense is pretty sad.
Yes, the owner of the website can tell based on users' referrer data what web page they visited from. In this case, it means the government knows that 400k people got to the vote.gov site by clicking a link on Taylor's instagram.
Yeah, and where would this "400% - 500% increase in registration" have been? lol I cant imagine nation-wide voting registration shootng up by 4.5x becasue of TSwift. Pedantic, whatever, but just hate annoying, cliickbait-y headlines right.
She has a massive reach, especially to a lot of people that usually do not follow politics.
Most people that already wanted to vote, were probably already registered or at the very least didn't plan to do it all in a single day.
I could totally see someone like Taylor Swift causing a significant spike compared to the day to day traffic...tho it probably is just that, a short spike without a massive impact on overall voter registration.
But I wouldn't be at all surprised if a study would find out that her involvement somehow increased voter turnout by something like 0.X %...swifties are crazy devoted.
Yeah, and where would this "400% - 500% increase in registration" have been?
Mainly young voters, I assume. Most older people are already registered.
I cant imagine nation-wide voting registration shootng up by 4.5x becasue of TSwift.
Why not? It's not as if 1 million people are registering to vote every day, so (according to the analysis) we're talking about an increase from <2k per hour to 9-10k per hour - not exactly an impossible number to wrap your head around.
Then you should read the article so you understand how link referrals are tracked and how the increase in registrations was calculated. Because it's not a clickbait, it's actually true.
This is just completely incorrect. You can easily verify that many sources from all are saying Taylor Swifts post has led to 400k additional visitors to vote.gov since she posted it, at the time of reporting, around 40 hours ago.
So for 9-10k people on average to be signing up as a result of her post, that would mean near 100% of people who clicked the link have signed up. Keep in mind that people of any age, background and country can and will have clicked that link.
They’re clearly just reporting that 400k people have clicked the link because of her and they’re being extremely sneaky by saying they are “coming and trying to vote”
I’m sure some people have registered to vote because of her which is of course a good thing, but if you seriously think 400k people signed up to vote in the last 40 hours because of this post that’s just delusional, for that to be accurate it would mean not a single person who wasn’t registered to vote in the US but was eligible to and then did it clicked the link.
According to this article, it’s 400k hits in the first 24 hours, not 40. And 9k-10k registrations an hour. So that’s 216k-240k registrations…a little over half of the people who clicked.
That was the peak. The average is about half that. Also, for days 2 and 3, the peak dropped to about 7k per hour. This is all still a significant increase, but not quite the level you estimate.
Let’s assume that’s correct and it would be 50% of people who clicked the link.
You believe that half of all people who click on a link that Taylor Swift, who has 284m followers from all over the world of all ages, were all citizens of the United States and eligible to vote and weren’t currently registered and went through the entire process to become registered?
I am already registered to vote so I didn't click the link. If someone posted about an election in Iceland with a registration link, I wouldn't click it since I know I can't vote in Iceland.
I think it's pretty reasonable that half the people who clicked the link that allows them to register to vote were people who needed to register to vote. The amount who clicked the link is a tiny fraction of the amount who viewed the post.
How many 18-year-olds do you think were actually registered bro?
It's not like this pace is going to maintain consistency of any kind. But if you're talking about a single college basketball arena full of college kids, yes, I believe it. It sounds plausible as f***
Almost nobody in my HS graduating class voted at all in Bush v Gore, the first president we could vote for. At 18 we were more worried about where the next house party was at and who could find weed.
phew, for a second there I was afraid that a bunch of young women were going to vote. Turns out they just clicked a link. Can you even imagine? Young women, voting? Crazy.
Except that's not true at all: The metric that is being used is voter registration check API requests. Such a request is counted when a visitor goes to vote.gov and attempts to register. In other words, it is a far more meaningful metric than just "going to the website." What is true, however, is that not all registration requests lead to a registration. Some users may not actually fill out the process and complete the registration, some users live in one of eight states that do not allow online voter registration, and some are ineligible to register.
The graph measuring the requests is shown 23 seconds into the video. You can see that it peaks around 2,000 requests/hour before the Taylor Swift endorsement, climbs to a peak of 10,000 requests/hour the first day of the endorsement, and then around 7,000 requests/hour the second and third day.
The increase in visits to the web site is far, far larger. It increased from 30,000 to 406,000 daily visits. That's an increase of 1250%.
“According to data firm TargetSmart, Swift’s endorsement has led to a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration — between 9,000-10,000 people per hour.”
Pretty misleading of them if they actually mean ‘interest’, but I don’t know, either way those numbers are insane.
Thanks for clarifying... Isn't it a bit crazy though that some people need their favourite pop star to pipe up and give their opinion about something before they plant a flag?? I don't get people 🤷🏻♂️
It is a funnel though. Since it is in percentages, it is fair to assume it will flow through at a similar rate.
The difference would be if they are better or worse qualified than the average person who registers, but I don't think we have any reason to believe one way or another on this one.
Still, if you go to the voter registration website and find out you are not registered but can, how many visitors to the website will chose not to register?
400% is just 4x the original. Going from 30k registrations on a normal day to 120k-150k is significant but not staggering. (And as you point out. This is just the traffic. Not even sign ups). Articles always do this, use the percent instead of the multiplier and you can stick a 500 in your headline instead of a 5.
I don’t think we can contribute that solely to Taylor swift when it was also possibly the worst debate in our country’s history. Great PR strategy of hers though. Definitely appears like it’s due to her but we’ll never know. I personally logged onto the site that day because I remembered to check…because of the DEBATE on national tv???????
Update: According to data firm TargetSmart, Swift’s endorsement has led to a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration — between 9,000-10,000 people per hour.
Listened to the actual interview. No, there was not a 400% - 500% increase in registrations. There was that much increase in interest i.e. going to the website.
He says: "400-500% of people trying to register to vote."
Also didn’t she announce literally right after the debate? So how do we know it wasn’t because of that or from people seeing all the clips the next day?
Should have been obvious from the headline. A normal ratio for eligible Americans registered to vote is about two thirds. If actual vote registrations increased by 400% to 500%, you would have between ten thirds and eleven thirds registered — which isn't mathematically possible.
yeah i mean you’re just wrong about “we don’t know how many people registered”. the article literally states the increase in number of people who registered. it’s incredibly easy to look at source of entry for websites and tie back a conversion to a specific entry point.
Correct, we do not actually know how many people registered through the link. People are pointing to the Targetsmart graph in the interview, but it literally says "post-debate/Swift endorsement". If you look at their other statements (https://x.com/targetsmart) they all likewise lump the debate and swift endorsement together (e.g. "the Harris-Swift effect") and neither one is stated to be causal. The debate happened; a little later, the endorsement happened; over the next 2 days, a bunch of registrations happened.
Vote.gov can track which traffic came from Taylor's unique instagram link. Targetsmart's API seems to be able to track completed online voter registrations from all sources combined (EDIT: actually, someone downthread just corrected that it's not even new voter registrations that the graph is referring to, it's people using their API via sites like vote.org to check on the status of their voter registration. Some will have proceeded to register, but plenty will have already been registered with no issues to resolve.)
There is nothing to link those data points together. The graph shows a timeframe, which shows correlation. None of targetsmart, vote.gov, or CBS who did the interview, has claimed causation. Readers (and some publications, whether from clickbaitiness or data illiteracy) are misinterpreting correlation as causation. What Targetsmart's data actually says is that there was a 400-500% spike in daily registrations compared to typical daily registrations (EDIT: or, just in people checking the status of their registration).
If ALL of that were from Tswift, that would mean the debate itself, and the gazillion other sources encouraging people to register, had zero effect. Which is nonsensical.
From the actual interview embedded in the article; judge for yourself.
What we saw was this really massive increase; we're calling it the Swift effect, now, because really it's unlike anything I've seen. We're seeing a 4 or 500% increase in people coming and trying to register to vote immediately following the debate and in that period after Taylor Swift, uh, posted on instagram.
If you assume registration rate is largely independent of traffic totals, then (w/ some made up round numbers, using the 10K mentioned in the article for "peak" traffic).
2% of 1666 clicks implies 33 new registered voters
2% of 10000 clicks (500% more interest) implies 200 new registered voters
200/33 = ~6x, or a 600% percent estimated registration increase. Even assuming "swifties registration rate will be less", 1% of 10000 is still 100/33, or about a 300% increase. "We don't actually know how many of those people actually registered." is actually true, but stats can help form an educated guess.
She apparently linked it in a story. Which would also mean traffic from you know... The rest of the world that can't vote in US elections that would not have a reason to visit that website.
Also not clear from the article whether this was due to Taylor's endorsement or because of the debate which happened on the same night and had very high viewership.
The breathless reporting about her endorsement is getting absurd. She doesn't have a strong history of influence when it comes to politics. Her specifically endorsed candidate in Tennessee lost, and studies showed no real indication that her 2020 endorsement of Biden/Harris directly resulted in a significant increase in voter turnout. It's more important to the gossip rags that need a way to write headlines about Taylor Swift than it is in the actual realm of politics. But. If she can convince a few thousand people to vote, and I hope she has, it will not be a bad thing. So either way it's ultimately a positive.
The article received an update stating they confirmed that they are seeing 9000-10,000 registrations per hour, so it’s not just website traffic. They are registering.
3.7k
u/whenforeverisnt 6d ago
Listened to the actual interview. No, there was not a 400% - 500% increase in registrations. There was that much increase in interest i.e. going to the website. We don't actually know how many of those people actually registered.