Ariana Grande's Voter Registration Effort On Her Sweetener Tour Was So Successful

Ariana Grande is killing it on the Sweetener World Tour, selling out arenas across the country night after night, but she's doing much more than just singing her heart out on stage. The tour is making history — in the voter registration department, at least. Ariana Grande's voter registration effort on her Sweetener World Tour was so successful, it broke a major record, proving that her influence reaches far and wide.

According to a new report from CNBC, published July 1, the singer attracted a record-breaking number of eligible voters to actually register to vote. She teamed up with HeadCount to set up registration booths at all her Sweetener Tour stops to get ready for the all-important 2020 presidential election. Now, Grande is "the most successful single artist" to do so since 2008, when Barack Obama was elected as president, per HeadCount.

In March, prior to the tour's kickoff in Albany, New York, Grande announced that she was teaming up with nonprofit voter registration group HeadCount on tour to encourage her eligible fans to register to vote prior to the 2020 election. Fans that pledged to vote would even receive a "thank u, next gen" sticker, a clever name for the next generation of voters that can actually use their voice in 2020. The singer wrote in an Instagram post on March 21:

yeeeee. so excited to partner w @headcountorg to bring voter registration & participation to all of the US stops on the @sweetener tour. visit the headcount booth at the show to use your voice and get your ‘thank u, next gen’ sticker ... If you can’t be there to register on-site, text ‘Ariana’ to 40649 ... each and every one of you makes a difference.

While HeadCount is keeping the exact number of potential voters that Grande has helped register under wraps, the group did announce that the Sweetener World Tour was the most successful solo artist tour they've been a part of since 2008, a record previously set by Jack Johnson's summer tour prior to Obama's groundbreaking election. HeadCount also stated that they registered twice as many voters during Grande's shows as any other tour over the past three years.

Overall, the group has registered over 17,000 new voters in 2019 alone, including 1,390 attendees at Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, which is the most people they have ever registered in a single event. “People are really excited to vote in the next election,” HeadCount’s executive director, Andy Bernstein, said in a statement to CNBC. “It’s very clear that people are kind of waking up.”

Celebrities with large platforms are proven to have a major impact when encouraging their followers to vote, as proven when Taylor Swift urged her 112 million Instagram followers to vote in the 2018 midterms. Within just a couple days of her post, over 102,000 young Americans had registered to vote, which many tied to her encouragement.

Grande made a wise and very helpful move with her decision to link up with HeadCount. And given that she just added a second U.S. leg to the Sweetener Tour, scheduled for the end of 2019, the number of registered voters is set to grow even higher. "Thank u next gen" indeed.