As the dust settles on the US elections and shocked, angry, despairing liberals around the world are entering the seven stages of grief. As they look around for anyone to blame for the failure of Kamala Harris to stop Donald Trump from returning to power, few members of the American elite are as outraged and gobsmacked as Hollywood’s famously liberal celebrity community.
One election season tradition that has come under scrutiny is the celebrity endorsement — traditionally seen as a way to influence undecided couch potatoes and younger voters to exercise their democratic rights, and get up and do something to change the world.
In the few months in which Harris was the Democratic nominee, after Joe Biden stepped down, celebrity democrats worked furiously to help her raise record amounts for her campaign and to offer advice on how to influence voters to stand behind her.
George Clooney wrote an impassioned op-ed for The New York Times in July, urging Biden to step aside — a moment that in this particularly fast-paced election cycle was seen as a decisive intervention. Taylor Swift, after months of speculation and clickbait articles wondering if she would, finally came out in support of Harris in September. The endorsement was seen as a major victory for the Democrats and yielded positive results when it received 10-million likes and resulted in 400,000 Swifties logging on to a voter registration site. ABC declared in a headline that the superstar singer’s endorsement “could change the election game”. Swift’s endorsement seemed to open the floodgates, as many other global celebrities came out to show their support for Harris. Beyoncé appeared at a Harris rally in Huston and Lizzo, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Lady Gaga, Harrison Ford and Oprah Winfrey all made public endorsements.
Hours after it became clear that Harris would not become the first female leader of the free world, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story in which it examined voter tally data to show that in spite of “all the Gen Z courtship and endorsements from celebrities with young fans ... Harris significantly lost ground among 18- to-29-year-olds compared to Biden”.
It seems that no-one in the Democratic Party has bothered to pay any heed to a study conducted in 2010 by North Carolina State University that showed young voters do not care about celebrity election endorsements and they are sometimes put off by such antics. They also, unsurprisingly to any parent of a teenager or 20-something, may like even less any celebrity who makes such endorsements.
The candidate for whom a celebrity endorsement may have had some positive voting impact wasn’t Harris but rather her opponent and former celebrity himself, Donald J Trump. His publicity stunt in which he spent a few moments working the fry station at a McDonald’s and his “as normal as normal for Trump can be” three-hour sit-down with podcast king Joe Rogan may have proved far more effective than any of Harris’ A-list celebrity endorsements.
In an election many commentators have observed as demonstrating the stark divide between rich, liberal elites and working-class middle Americans, the results may yet show with stark finality the contempt that many Trump supporters hold for the liberal values of Hollywood and its stars. Rogan’s podcast was cited by many white, male college-age voters in exit poll interviews as a deciding factor for them and noted that Harris’ failure to participate in a similar interview with Rogan may have cemented their support for Trump.
Trump wasn’t without his own army of celebrities who appeared on podiums with him, even if many of these weren’t quite of the star calibre of Harris’ celebrity friends. Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and Dana White are not Clooney, Swift or Beyoncé, but in the communities that finally proved to matter most they enjoy similar, if not greater popularity among Trump supporters.
It’s perhaps impossible to tell whether Trump’s lower level of celebrity endorsements may have helped him with voters or whether endorsements by Rogan, Hogan and White may have affected his popularity with a young, white male demographic with which Harris struggled to connect. This election may at the very least have finally shown that celebrity endorsements aren’t worth the effort and hype that they’ve enjoyed for so long.
The only time celebrity who could affect the direction of an election, Laurence Maslon, an arts professor at New York University told The Guardian, was when “the candidate is already a celebrity”. It worked for Ronald Reagan, it worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger and it’s worked twice for former tabloid favourite and host of The Apprentice, Donald Trump.
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