Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris

Swift, whose millions of devoted fans are known as Swifties, made the announcement on Instagram along with a picture of herself holding a cat moments after the presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, concluded.

“I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them," she wrote on Instagram, where she has 283 million followers. “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos."

She signed the post with “Childless Cat Lady," a reference to comments made by JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.

Vance told Fox News in 2021 that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Swift’s endorsement is further proof that Democrats are the party of the wealthy and the elite. “President Trump is going to continue to fight for the forgotten men and women of this country," Leavitt said.

The singer-songwriter supported President Biden in the 2020 election. It was the first time Swift publicly endorsed a presidential candidate.

Swift stopped short of telling her fans whom to vote for, telling them to do the research themselves.

“Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make," she said.

Many of her fans didn’t wait for the Harris endorsement to become official. They’ve already formed Swifties for Kamala, a coalition of fans raising money and getting people to register to vote.

In August, Trump posted a phony photo of Swift dressed like Uncle Sam, surrounded by the words: “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump."

“I accept!" Trump said on Truth Social, his social network, as if he was accepting a real endorsement.

Swift said in her Instagram post Tuesday that the fake photos conjured up her fears about the dangers of spreading misinformation.

“It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter," she said. “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth."

Harris’s running mate Tim Walz seems to be a Swiftie, or at least his children are. He once tweeted about trying to buy Swift tickets, posting a photo of his cat Afton yawning: “Afton after being online all day and not getting Taylor Swift tickets," he wrote.

On the day of one of the concerts in Minneapolis, he tweeted: “Question for all the dads waiting to pick the kids up from Taylor Swift: What’re you listening to in the car?"

Swift said she was heartened by Harris’s selection of Walz as her running mate, noting his record on LGBTQ+ rights, in vitro fertilization and “a woman’s right to her own body for decades."

Swift, who released her first album as a teenager in 2006, was reluctant to give her political views for most of her career. That changed in 2018, when she announced on Instagram that she wouldn’t vote for Marsha Blackburn, a Republican running for a senate seat in Tennessee, where Swift has a home. Blackburn won the election.

In 2020, she announced she was voting for President Biden and Vice President Harris, also in an an Instagram post.

Swift’s 2020 documentary “Miss Americana" showed the star grappling with whether she should speak out against Blackburn, who was backed at the time by Trump. Swift’s team worried speaking out politically would alienate fans and jeopardize her safety.

“I need to be on the right side of history," she told them.

In March, Swift urged fans to vote on Super Tuesday, reminding her fans that Tennessee and other states were holding primaries. She, again, didn’t offer any endorsements.

Last year, Swift’s “Eras Tour" was a phenomenon, grossing more than $1 billion, the first tour to do so. Fans going to her shows filled nearby restaurants and hotels, with cities reporting an economic boost that even the Philadelphia Federal Reserve noticed. She was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2023, appearing on the cover in December with her cat around her neck.

In August, three “Eras Tour" concerts in Vienna were canceled after authorities said they arrested teenagers who allegedly were planning to drive into fans outside the venue and use knives and explosives to kill as many fans as possible.

Natalie Andrews and Alex Leary contributed to this article.

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com