Now Trump’s been found guilty, Taylor Swift could prove crucial to the US election

Of the things currently keeping Donald Trump awake at night – his historic conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records being chief among them – you wouldn’t expect a singer who found fame on America’s conservative country music scene to be particularly high on the list. But as I learned when I wrote a book about her, when it comes to Taylor Swift, the rulebook is forever being tossed out of the window.

You’ve probably already noticed that Swift’s fanbase is ridiculously large, so let’s crunch some actual numbers. A poll found that 53 per cent of Americans say they are fans, while 16 per cent identify as “avid fans”. Her “Swiftie” fanbase spans five generations and a study found that 18 per cent of American voters – that’s some 30 million adults – say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate Swift had endorsed.

Let’s be clear: the idea that a simple social media post from Taylor would swing the entire vote is exaggerated – but with the White House election just months away, and Trump on the back foot after being found guilty in his court case, the significant influence she has shown to have in politics and beyond could become a problem for the former president.

Last year, she posted a short message on Instagram encouraging her 272 million followers to register to vote. Afterwards, the website she had directed her fans to – Vote.org – recorded more than 35,000 registrations, according to the organisation.

Biden will look at this influence and rub his hands with glee. Some 55 per cent of her self-declared “avid fans” identify as Democrats, while 23 per cent are Republicans, so even if she were only to boost the overall turnout this November, that would disproportionately benefit Biden.

Another sign of her influence came when she made millions of people take an interest in a sport for the first time. After she started dating American football star Travis Kelce, a survey found that 20 per cent of millennials and 24 per cent of Gen Z said that they had started following the sport. Then, this year’s Super Bowl became the most watched of all time and the second most watched TV programme ever, behind the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

Looking at past White House elections, the evidence of how much sway celebrities have is mixed. A study found that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama before the 2008 presidential primary led to one million extra votes for the White House hopeful. But during the 2016 presidential election, the public endorsements of a galaxy of stars, including Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga, weren’t enough to stop Hillary Clinton from losing to Trump.

So maybe the strongest evidence of Swift’s potential to swing the vote comes from Republicans, who are baffled by how an unmarried woman in her thirties has become a billionaire and therefore terrified about what such a force of nature could do to them at the ballot box.

A general rule of thumb is that Trump doesn’t bother attacking anyone unless he considers them a threat. In February, he wrote on social media that Swift is “disloyal” and a source close to him told the media that the Maga movement would declare a “holy war” against her if she formally endorsed Biden.

Don’t be too surprised if she does just that. Ahead of the 2020 elections, she came within a whisker of it when she tweeted Trump, saying that after “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency”, he had “the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence”, adding that “we will vote you out in November”.

Over the years, Swift has gathered a reserve of goodwill that’s almost unprecedented in pop music history. Maybe she’ll decide that this autumn is the time to bank it.

Newkey-Burden’s book ‘Taylor Swift: The Whole Story’ is out now. The crowdfunder for his book about the Eras Tour is here