Taylor Swift performs “August” at Stadion Letzigrund in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 10. The pop star will likely urge her fans to vote this fall, which could play a pivotal role in the election. Zack Aldrich/Portland Press Herald

Conventional wisdom holds that Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black woman of South Asian descent whose nomination stands to make history, can reenergize segments of the Democratic base that are essential to keeping the White House this fall: Black voters, Latino and Asian voters – and young voters in particular.

A scroll through social media shows young Americans embracing Harris memes (if you’re confused by the sea of coconut emojis, a Gen Z-er can fill you in). But as the Trump team crisscrosses the U.S. and Harris begins campaigning in earnest, one figure looms even larger.

And she routinely draws crowds upward of 70,000 people.

In December, Taylor Swift’s titanic Eras Tour crossed the $1 billion mark, becoming the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. By the end of 2024, that amount is expected to more than double. In choosing Swift as its Person of the Year in 2023, Time magazine referred to her in no uncertain terms as “the main character of the world.”

Swift inspires a loyalty in her fans so intense that they’re willing to pay thousands of dollars for back-of-the-house, nosebleed seats, while many Americans (myself included) have scraped together the funds to travel abroad, all for the privilege of standing in line for hours outside a stadium to see her perform.

In July, I traveled from Boston to Zurich and stood with scores of young fans on a sweltering Swiss afternoon. The pop star delivered more than 40 songs over a staggering 3.5 hours – muscling through intricate choreography, serenading us from the roof of a woodland cabin, playing on a piano blanketed in moss.

Her rendering of “All Too Well” culminated in a surreal moment, with the audience chanting the song’s final lines a cappella along with Swift. It was intimate, somber and almost churchlike. Swift is a master of vulnerability, and her fans love her for it.

The Eras Tour returns to the U.S. on Oct. 18, with a sold-out show in Miami, and concludes Nov. 3, two days before the election.

This cannot be welcome news for Team Trump.

Swift performs “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 10. The Pennsylvania native has 283 million Instagram followers. Zack Aldrich/Portland Press Herald

Swift was widely criticized for withholding her political views back in 2016, a topic explored in the Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.” At the time, the idea of Swift wading into politics led her managers to worry not only for her career but for her personal safety. In 2018, Swift cast those fears aside when Republican Marsha Blackburn mounted a campaign for U.S. Senate in Tennessee, which Swift, who grew up in the Volunteer State, found abhorrent.

Calling Blackburn “Trump in a wig,” Swift excoriated the candidate for her vote against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Swift had a personal stake in the matter; she had recently weathered a defamation case brought by a former DJ who groped her in public and then sued her after being fired from his job. Swift countersued for assault and battery, seeking a symbolic $1 in damages, and she won her case.

During that election cycle, Swift urged her Instagram followers to register to vote, and they listened.

“We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift’s post,” said Kamari Guthrie, then head of communications for Vote.org. Blackburn ultimately defeated challenger Phil Bredesen, with 54% of the vote to his 43%, but Swift’s endorsement of the Democrat turned what should’ve been an unremarkable race in a ruby-red state into one of the most competitive in the nation. Blackburn is up for reelection this fall.

Last September, Swift again made an appeal to vote to her Instagram followers – of which there are 283 million, a group slightly larger than the population of Indonesia.

In turn, Vote.org recorded 35,252 new signups on National Voter Registration Day, a 23% bump over 2022, according to NPR. The number of 18-year-olds registered more than doubled from the year earlier.

In a 2024 race that’s likely to be decided by several tens of thousands of Americans in a handful of swing states, a push to the polls by the world’s biggest pop star could tip the scales. The burden is now on the Trump campaign to persuade young voters that their lives would improve in a second Trump term. If the former president fails to win them over, he’ll confront what Swift has warned us about all along:

“Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”