Taylor Swift’s Call to Vote Sent Hundreds of Thousands to Registration Tools

Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and her call for her fans to vote drove hundreds of thousands of people to voter registration resources.

Her post on Instagram included a link to Vote.gov, a website run by two federal agencies, the General Services Administration and the Election Assistance Commission. About 406,000 people clicked on the link in the 24 hours after Ms. Swift posted it, according to a spokeswoman for the G.S.A.

That link accounted for more than half of the roughly 727,000 visitors Vote.gov received from Tuesday to Wednesday. The remainder was likely driven by the debate itself. Last week, from Sept. 3-9, the site received an average of about 30,000 visitors per day, according to the agency.

Vote.gov serves as a clearinghouse that directs prospective voters to their state’s registration website. Since people cannot register to vote directly on the site, it is not possible to determine how many of the people who clicked the link also registered.

Two other organizations that provide similar clearinghouse resources also had big spikes in traffic coinciding with Ms. Swift’s post.

Celina Stewart, the chief executive of the League of Women Voters, which runs Vote411.org, said that as of Thursday morning, the number of people using its voter registration tools had more than doubled since Tuesday — and the people who visited were on average younger than the site’s typical visitors.

On Monday, Ms. Stewart said, the age group that had the most visitors to Vote411.org was 55 to 65. On Wednesday and into Thursday morning, it was 18 to 24.

“Whenever a celebrity uses their platform to encourage civic participation, that’s a win for democracy,” she said. “We applaud Taylor Swift for