Which Taylor Swift Album Is The Most Popular?

The oldest poll I could find on Taylor Swift was from 2010. Even then, it was clear she was on her way to being a pop-culture phenomenon. When CBS News/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair asked American adults which of five musicians they would most like to have dinner with, 22 percent said Swift — more than Jay-Z, Susan Boyle and Lady Gaga, and second only to Paul McCartney. And among respondents aged 18-29, she was No. 1.

Thirteen years and several hit albums later, Swift has cemented her place as one of music’s biggest superstars. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 53 percent of American adults identified as fans of Swift. And last weekend, she kicked off her widely anticipated — and logistically messy — Eras Tour, a retrospective revue of her musical evolution. (If anyone has a spare ticket to one of the shows this weekend in Las Vegas, DM me.)

But when you ask Swift fans which era they liked the most, you get 10 different answers. To celebrate the start of the Eras Tour, Morning Consult and another pollster, YouGov, asked people to identify their favorite Swift album, and they found plenty of disagreement. But those disagreements can teach us something valuable about polling.

What is America’s favorite Taylor Swift album?
Share of respondents who identified each Taylor Swift album as their favorite, according to a YouGov poll and two different versions of a Morning Consult poll

In the YouGov poll, 15 percent of people who like or love at least one of Swift’s albums identified “Lover” as their favorite, followed by 13 percent of people who identified “1989” as their favorite. But in Morning Consult’s version, a plurality of self-identified “avid” Swift fans preferred “1989,” while “Lover” had only 5 percent support. Swift’s debut album, “Taylor Swift,” was second in the Morning Consult poll with 14 percent, and “Fearless” was third with 12 percent. And the results look weirder still when you look at Morning Consult’s results among all adults, not just avid fans. There, “Fearless” is tied with “1989” at No. 1 with 7 percent, followed by “Taylor Swift” at 6 percent.

These polls may seem all over the place, but there’s good reason for them to disagree. First, most of these differences are within the polls’ margins of error. Basically, whenever you poll only a small sample of a larger population, some polling error is inevitable — usually enough to explain minor differences between various polls. Since the margin of error in Morning Consult’s poll of avid fans was ±5 percentage points, the actual number of fans whose favorite album is “1989” could be anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent. That range includes the 13 percent who picked “1989” in the YouGov poll, so the two aren’t necessarily contradictory.

Second, the population being polled matters. It’s not surprising that the entire population of American adults has different tastes from people who like or love one of Swift’s albums and avid Swift fans. The latter groups may have additional insight into some of these albums that help them appreciate them more. Political polls can disagree (without disagreeing) in the same way: A poll of adults may have different results from a poll of likely voters. So when conducting political analysis, we look at polls that are right for the context (e.g., when forecasting elections, we look at surveys of likely voters).