The real reason Kamala Harris and Donald Trump chase celebrity endorsements
From Beyonce to Hulk Hogan, famous faces rarely change voters’ minds – but that’s not always the point.
Beyonce is set to become the biggest star to appear alongside Kamala Harris on Saturday as her campaign seeks an American election unicorn – a celebrity who can actually persuade voters.
The superstar singer with 314 million followers on Instagram – even more than Taylor Swift’s 284 million – joins a huge roster of Harris backers from stage, screen and streaming in the time-honoured tradition of eye-catching endorsements.
Swing states have been given a rest for the day as Harris – who is holding her event with Beyonce in Houston – and Donald Trump both head to reliably Republican Texas for celebrity rendezvous.
Not to be outdone in the battle of the big names, Trump is recording an interview with Joe Rogan, the comedian and podcaster, at his studio in Austin. Although this might not amount to an endorsement, it gives the former president priceless access to the ears of America’s most-listened-to podcast, which has 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers.
Trump’s own celebrity line-up is a little less glamorous and rather more masculine than Harris’s, including a shirt-ripping appearance at the Republican convention this summer by the retired wrestler Hulk Hogan and musical backing from Kid Rock, although the model Amber Rose did also speak from the podium in Milwaukee.
Yet while a celebrity appearance excites rally audiences and entices donors at private events to open their wallets a little wider, there is scant evidence of a direct impact on actual voting outcomes.
“People are obsessed with celebrity in the modern era but that doesn’t mean it produces votes,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said.
“Celebrities are useful because they attract the attention of potential voters who are not enamoured of politics.
“[But] it’s up to the candidate to make the sale. People are not automatised. They do not vote for X, Y or Z because Beyonce or Hulk Hogan or anybody else tells them to.”
There are notable examples of well-established stars helping to introduce voters to relative political newcomers, however.
One of the most famous marked the start of the modern political era when Frank Sinatra held fundraisers for John F Kennedy and sang the theme song of the young senator’s campaign, High Hopes. Sinatra was eventually put in charge of arranging the new president’s inaugural ball.
And one endorsement which an academic study identified as having a significant direct effect came when Oprah Winfrey became an early supporter of Barack Obama even before he declared his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
Economists Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore concluded that her endorsement earned Obama at least one million votes in the primary contest against Hillary Clinton, more than his winning margin.
“Mainly she was talking to black voters – when she took that southern tour, the crowds were heavily black,” Sabato said of Winfrey. “But then they listened to Obama. They were impressed with what he said and how he came across. Oprah attracted the crowds. He made the sale.”
A more recent example of a direct voter impact was provided by Taylor Swift, the singer who has endorsed Harris this year but not appeared on stage with her.
In September last year on National Voter Registration Day, Swift urged her Instagram following to register to vote and pointed them to Vote.org. It received 35,252 registrations, a 23 per cent rise over the previous year, with double the number of 18-year-olds.
The Harris campaign is hoping that Beyonce can help the candidate connect better with young black men, with polls suggesting a significant minority is being attracted by Trump.
The singer probably has a greater connection with Gen Z than Barack Obama. Of her more than 320 million Instagram followers, 51.7 per cent are female and 48.3 per cent are male, according to analysis by StarNgage.
But a GenForward survey at the University of Chicago found some key shifts in findings published this month. Interviews with 2359 voters aged 18 to 40 found a quarter of young black men supporting Trump. This compared with the overall picture for all black men in 2020 of almost nine in 10 backing Biden. It suggests a more useful appearance for Harris than Beyonce would be her husband, the rapper Jay-Z.
Arguably the celebrity endorsement that will count for the most during this election is Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who has thrown himself behind the Trump campaign.
Musk brings cash – a lot of it.
He has given $US118.5 million ($180m) to his America Political Action Committee, a campaigning organisation active in swing states registering and persuading voters on Trump’s behalf. This makes him the second-biggest donor of the 2024 campaign behind Timothy Mellon, the 82-year-old heir to a banking fortune, who has given $US165 million to Trump and the Republicans.
There is no denying that celebrity has had an impact on modern American politics. Candidates have even used their fame to advance political careers, including Trump himself, who was well known to many Americans from his appearance as a successful businessman in the popular TV series, The Apprentice.
The Times
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