Celebrity culture in the United States is rife and the 2024 election is no exemption.
Many celebrities have made endorsements this election including musicians Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and Eminem for Kamala Harris and YouTuber Jake Paul, podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan and ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan for Donald Trump.
But do any celebrity endorsements really impact elections?
On the 11th of September 2024, the world’s biggest pop star Taylor Swift took to Instagram to formally endorse Kamala Harris as president.
Swift, who has 238 million followers on the social media platform, has previously encouraged voter registration and endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020. Vote.org confirmed that after encouragement from Swift to register to vote, 35,000 unregistered voters filled out the forms to enable them to vote in today’s election. Most were aged between 18 and 22. The CEO of vote.org accredited this historic boost to Swift.
The Democrats clearly feel the pop sensation’s backing matters because in the wake of her post the party launched a range of merchandise centred around Swift.
Further, her endorsement led to a wave of social media support for Harris. Appearing in her Instagram photo holding her cat Benjamin Button, Swift had tagged her endorsement post #childlesscatlady in a dig at Republican Vice-Presidential nominee JD Vance’s characterisation of Harris in an interview, and the hashtag went viral.
This implies that perhaps this endorsement has affected the election as the ‘Swifties’ will always listen and follow Taylor Swift and so an endorsement for Harris means voter registration rises and interest in the Harris campaign follows.
Musk steps to the stage
Just overa month later Republican nominee Donald Trump was joined on stage by tech billionaire and celebrity Elon Musk
Musk described the election as a must-win situation for Trump and donated $75m (£58m) to a foundation set up to aid Trump’s campaign. However, this fateful day is proof that celebrity endorsements do not always have a positive effect for their chosen candidate. The Democratic Party and the Harris-Walz campaign were quick to hit back at the Musk endorsement of Trump: framing it that Musk and Trump were “self-obsessed rich guys”. Musk’s own social media platform, X, even floated audio of Musk and Trump laughing over Musk’s firing of striking workers – a damaging image for a presidential candidate.
This criticism of Trump caused by Musk’s endorsement has been viewed over 7 million times on social media and Harris now leads Trump 10-2 in polls of those in unions.
Overall do celebrities endorsing candidates in an election make an impact? For better or worse, celebrity opinion does matter in the election, particularly to younger voters. A recent Harvard study showed that people aged 18-25 are particularly unmotivated to vote in elections even for President. It also demonstrated that these people in this age range typically get their news from social media and celebrities like Swift or Musk.
Because of this, young Americans may be more motivated to vote and align with their favourite celebrity – insinuating that for the 2024 Presidential election, the endorsement and encouragement of celebrities can affect the campaign and therefore the election, be it a positive or negative influence.
Main image by Eva Rinaldi on Flickr