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Eighteen percent believe there is “a covert government effort” for the pop icon to help President Biden win re-election, according to a Monmouth University survey.
The Super Bowl may be over, but right-wing conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift and the 2024 presidential election are still raging.
Eighteen percent of Americans believe there is “a covert government effort” for Ms. Swift, the global pop icon, to help President Biden win re-election, according to a poll released Wednesday by Monmouth University.
The poll found that a vast majority of people — 71 percent — who believe the government is using Ms. Swift to help Mr. Biden were Republicans, and 83 percent of those who embraced the baseless theory said they were likely to vote for former President Donald J. Trump in November.
There was overlap with 2020 election denial: 73 percent of respondents who subscribed to the Swift conspiracy theory also said they believed the lie, perpetuated by Mr. Trump and others, that the last presidential contest was fraudulent.
Dubious connections between Ms. Swift and Mr. Biden prompted a wave of anger and wild speculation among online conservatives in the run-up to the Super Bowl on Sunday, which Ms. Swift attended as a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, the team that employs her boyfriend, the tight end Travis Kelce.
Mr. Biden’s campaign has privately longed for another endorsement from Ms. Swift, who backed him in 2020, and jokingly entertained the idea that the president had helped fix the big game. After the Chiefs won in overtime on Sunday, the Biden campaign posted on social media a photo of the Dark Brandon meme, which depicts Mr. Biden as a mastermind with laser eyes, with the winking caption: “Just like we drew it up.”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein
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