The relationship between celebrity and politics stretches back over 100 years. In the run-up to the 1920 election, Hollywood stars Mary Pickford and Al Jonson backed Republican presidential candidate Warren G Harding, who went on to win a landslide victory. More recently, hundreds of celebrities including Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, while Cardi B and Ariana Grande joined swathes of other stars who publicly supported Joe Biden in 2020. This year, some of pop culture’s biggest names have also endorsed their candidate of choice: the likes of Beyoncé, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Taylor Swift have joined the blue corner; Azealia Banks, Hulk Hogan, and Elon Musk the red.
While celebrity endorsements are evidently nothing new, it seems as though both presidential candidates are keener to curry favour with celebrities and pop culture icons than ever before: take Kamala Harris’s campaign embracing the lime-green aesthetics of Charli xcx’s Brat, or Donald Trump posting AI-generated images of Taylor Swift which falsely suggested that the singer had endorsed him (when she eventually endorsed Harris, the former president posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on his right-wing social media platform Truth Social). Both have also eschewed traditional media in favour of sitting down with popular podcasters: Harris most notably with Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy (the second most listened-to podcast in the world), Trump with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience (the most listened-to podcast in the world).
It tracks that US politicians are keen to speak to voters through their favourite celebrities. Younger American voters are becoming increasingly disillusioned with politics and the mainstream media, and tapping into pop culture is one way politicians can reconnect with this alienated chunk of the electorate. But can celebrity endorsements actually shift the dial?
On the one hand, it seems unlikely. Take Taylor Swift: over half of her fanbase already identify as Democrats, and Harris’ particular flavour of liberal feminism is very much in keeping with the kind of saccharine, substanceless, ‘girl power’ politics that Swift’s brand promotes. Before Swift had even formally expressed her support for Harris, thousands of Swifties had allied together to form the ‘Swifties for Kamala’ campaign group. It was no real surprise when Swift came forward to endorse Harris – so are celebrities who endorse candidates often just ‘preaching to the choir’?
“That’s probably true, but the choir shows up every Sunday,” says Richard T Longoria, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “Campaigns need to energise their base to improve their turnout numbers. If a celebrity can get partisans energised and enthusiastic about the campaign, then this will help them on election day.” Relatedly, after Charli XCX tweeted “kamala IS brat”, one communications director told Teen Vogue that the viral Brat-themed content shared by Harris (and Charli) fans online helped boost the campaign’s reach: “The Harris campaign has generated a lot of momentum on the internet and reached people who were not reached by the Biden campaign.”
Recent research claims one in ten Americans say a celebrity has made them reconsider their political beliefs – but there’s little concrete proof that a few kind words from a pop star could convince significant numbers of MAGA devotees to vote blue. Instead, most experts agree that celebrity endorsements work by motivating more ambivalent citizens to get out and vote. “It’s hard to speculate about the difference a specific endorsement makes in how someone will vote, but it definitely impacts whether they vote,” explains Ashley Spillane, a social impact strategist and political expert who worked on the Harvard study. This chimes with John Street, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia. “Celebrity support is about getting people to vote, rather than to influence who they vote for,” he explains. “While they might not change minds, they undoubtedly make voting just a little bit more ‘cool’.”
Celebrities help reach new audiences, especially young and first-time voters, and they can help make the experience fun and exciting
While it’s worth noting that not all endorsements carry equal weight – Taylor Swift, with her 284 million Instagram followers, undoubtedly holds more sway than, say, comedian Billy Eichner, who has 829,000 – evidence suggests that high profile celebrities really can get people to the polls. In 2008, economists at the University of Maryland published research which argued that Winfrey’s endorsement of Obama netted him over 1 million votes. More recently, a Harvard study published in August 2024 found that celebrity voices can be incredibly powerful when it comes to promoting civic engagement. “Celebrities help reach new audiences, especially young and first-time voters, and they can help make the experience fun and exciting,” explains Spillane, who worked on the Harvard study.
But if celebrities really want to mobilise their fans, it’s essential that they share their endorsement in the most impactful way. “To really move the needle their endorsements must also emphasise why they decided to become a voter, why the election matters to them, and how their audience can register to vote and find their polling place, which the research shows all makes a real impact,” Spillane explains. “Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris hit all the best practices from our recent Harvard study on how celebrities can motivate their audiences to get involved.” Notably, Swift’s post endorsing Harris drove more than 400,000 users to voter registration site vote.gov the following day.
Evidently, celebrity endorsements might not succeed in converting hordes of die-hard Republicans to Harris-loving liberals. But they can be effective when it comes to getting more disillusioned voters to go out and vote. And in an election this close – at time of writing, polling puts Harris just 0.9 percentage points ahead of Trump – every vote counts. “The effect [of celebrity endorsements] is often relatively small and at the margins,” Street surmises. “But given the tightness of the current race, that minimal influence may prove significant.”
