US Election 2024: Who is winning the battle for celebrity endorsements?

Celebrity endorsements are incredibly important in politics. Thanks to the support of major stars like Beyoncé and Lena Dunham, Hillary Clinton swept to a decisive victory in 2016, vanquishing Donald Trump from the political arena forever. A last minute intervention in the 2015 British election by Russell Brand led to a landslide win for Ed Milliband, and the rest was history – Nigel Farage was never heard from again and Brexit never happened. If there’s one thing the average Joe responds well to, it’s being told what to do by millionaire elites in major cities.

This year, the battle for celebrity endorsements is heating up. After a slow start, getting rid of Biden has unleashed a tide of entertainment industry backing for the Democrats. Trump is doing less well: a week after he circulated AI deep fakes which appeared to show Taylor Swift professing her support, he was criticised by the Foo Fighters after walking on stage to their song “My Hero” without permission (he had to stop using Beyoncé’s ‘Freedom’ for the same reason). But Trump still has a few cards up his sleeves, and not just hoary old dinosaurs like Kid Rock or Hulk Hogan.

The 2024 presidential campaign already feels like it’s lasted several lifetimes, and there are still over two months to go: there’s never going to be a better time to check out the celebrity endorsement scoreboards.

M.I.A

Almost everyone I’ve ever admired has let me down. When I was a child, I loved Harry Potter and Father Ted (if you’d told the ten-year-old me that the show’s creator would one day call me a “cunt” on Twitter for supporting trans rights, I’d have replied “… what?”) As a teenager, I loved the music of Morrissey, who now supports far-right parties, and the comedy stylings of Russell Brand, who has since been accused of sexual assault by multiple women. But of all my youthful heroes who have later disappointed me, M.I.A is the most surprising – this used to be one radical chica! How does someone go from writing protest songs about America’s border regime, name-checking the PLO and supporting Corbyn as recently as 2019 to endorsing Donald Trump, as she did earlier this week?

The pandemic did a number on us all, and the rich and famous are no exception – maybe their cosseted lives make them even more vulnerable to, if not outright radicalisation, then turning into an oddball. Over the last few years, M.I.A has become increasingly paranoid, expressing doubts about everything from COVID vaccines to the brain-washing effects of 5G   – a trajectory which seems to lead inevitably to outright conservatism. M.I.A, if you’re reading this, we know that the real you is still in there somewhere. Put down the tinfoil hat, delete Alex Jones number off your phone, and come back to us. Please… just come back.

KERRY KATONA

The Democrats have some big hitters on their sides, but you just know that Kamala’s team were holding emergency crisis talks when Kerry Katona came out batting for Trump. It’s difficult to overstate how powerful a hold the music of Atomic Kitten continues to exert over key battleground states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where you can’t walk down the street without hearing ‘Whole Again’ being blasted from a passing car and the anniversary of Ladies Night’s release is celebrated each year with flash mobs on the town square. It’s not for nothing that there’s a saying in American politics: he who holds the key to Katona, holds the key to the White House. Your move, Ms Harris…

AZEALIA BANKS

Azealia hasn’t formally endorsed Trump, but she has attended one of his rallies, described him as “fucking funny” and offered some characteristically harsh words of criticism to his opponent. Only time will tell whether her involvement will be enough to win over a key demographic: irony-poisoned millennial gay men who enjoy being homophobically abused. 

KANYE WEST

For years, Democrats have been depicting Trump as a fascist tyrant who poses a profound threat to democracy. For Kanye, who once declared his love for Adolf Hitler, this may be less of a dire warning and more like being threatened with a good time. He reaffirmed his long-standing support of the former president earlier this year – those of us eagerly awaiting a Kanye redemption arc will have to hold out a little while longer.

AMBER ROSE

Right-wingers love an apostate. No matter who you are, you could secure a million-pound book deal today if you are willing to write about how you used to be a progressive before opening your eyes, stepping away from the cult and accepting the reality that wokeness is bad and corporations pay too many taxes. For that reason, Amber Rose’s speech at the Republican National Convention went down particularly well: she presented herself as someone who was once hood-winked by “left-wing propaganda” into believing that Donald Trump was racist, which made her eventual conversion to the right seem all the more credible and brave. Maybe now back they’re on the same team, Rose and Kanye can finally bury the hatchet. Together they could become the right-wing version of the Clintons (so, the Clintons). 

ALMOST EVERY CELEBRITY, BUT FEWER THAN NORMAL

Basically every celebrity supports the Democrats, and this year has seen endorsement from all the middle-aged heavyweights you’d expect, alongside a younger generation of stars, including Olivia Rodrigo, and Megan Thee Stallion. Still, there have been some hold-outs this year. Beyoncé, who endorsed Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, still hasn’t formally endorsed Kamala, although she did give her permission to walk on stage to “Freedom” at the DNC. Many younger Gen-Z celebrities have held their tongues altogether. 

Backing the Democrats is usually a straightforward way of signalling you’re on the side of the good guys, but that’s more complicated when the party is complicit in an unpopular and deeply controversial foreign conflict (or a genocide, depending on your perspective). For many celebrities, endorsing the Democrats would now carry the risk of alienating large swathes of their audience, which mostly hasn’t been the case in the past. Liberalism no longer seems quite so benign and inoffensive when it’s indelibly associated with some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.

TAYLOR SWIFT…?

Despite the Biden campaign’s best efforts, Taylor Swift has yet to make an endorsement of any kind. Still, I keep saying Democrat staffers posting elaborate scenarios like, “she should hold a series of fabulous concerts in swing states, where the price of entry is showing that you’re on the electoral register!” I’m glad that people are having a good time writing fan fiction, but nothing even remotely like this is going to happen – you’d be as well hoping that Swift sends $10,000 to every single person who votes for Kamala. These days, she seem way too canny to risk pissing off a huge portion of the American public: the best the Democrats are going to get is – at best – a reshared Instagram story that says “VOTE ”, without specifying why or for whom.

CHARLI XCX

When Charli first described Kamala as “brat”, she clearly made it as a compliment. In a more recent interview, published this week, Charli expanded on her original tweet, saying that while she didn’t intend it as a formal endorsement and didn’t expect it to go as viral as it did, she’s happy to be on “the right side of democracy, the right side of human rights” and “happy to prevent democracy from failing forever.” Which is fair enough! Pop culture alone isn’t going to win the election but, however annoying it may have been, the Democrat’s adoption of Brat Summer did at least help the party to create a new sense of energy and momentum among its supporters. Still, if Trump does win in November, we shouldn’t be asking ourselves: but how could this possibly happen? Kamala was brat?