UNM Research: The impact a celebrity can have on an election

Your favorite celebrity can often influence parts of your life through the music you listen to or even the outfits you wear but could a celebrity also influence who you vote for in an election?

That's a question many researchers, including University of New Mexico Political Science Professor Jessica Feezell, have been trying to figure out. While she says a celebrity endorsement of a political candidate is not necessarily new, it's increasingly more common today.

"Anecdotally, I would chalk it up to just how prevalent and easily observable our political orientations are in a world dominated by social media where our personal and political lives overlap a lot," Feezell said.

In 1960, singer/actor Frank Sinatra endorsed John F. Kennedy, according to the History Channel. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Oprah Winfrey endorsed Former President Barack Obama. Rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has supported Former President Donald Trump in recent years. In 2024, Elon Musk, publicly announced he was backing Trump, the owner of X (the social media app once known as Twitter), and CEO of Tesla Motors. Most recently, pop star Taylor Swift took her endorsement for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to her social media page moments after the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump. In her September Instagram post, she encouraged fans to research the candidate's views and posted a link to help people register to vote. According to news sources, more than 400,000 users clicked that link which led them to vote.org for voter registration information.

"Ques from celebrities on how to vote are not my favorite way for people to decide who their preferred candidate is going to be, but I do like efforts to promote voter registration and to encourage people to be informed on the candidates and the issues," Feezell said.

While she believes celebrities can move public opinion, whether an endorsement could change an election is debatable. Research shows people with low levels of political interest are more susceptible to political messaging and are most easily persuadable in an election.

"People who are highly politically interested, deeply politically engaged already know their viewpoints and know how to vote, they are what we call 'crystallized' in terms of their public opinion and political view," Feezell said. "People who are not deeply politically engaged, are less 'crystallized' so they are more susceptible to information they receive from ques or endorsements."

The actual impact a celebrity has on an election is a question researchers have struggled to put a number on, instead, she says the best method to approximate what impact a celebrity endorsement might have is through experimental design.

"While it's hard to look at the election and be like, oh 3% of the total voters turned out because Taylor Swift told them to, we just can't do that," she said. "But what we can do through experimental designs is randomize people to receive a treatment or not and then figure out what effect that treatment has had on them."

According to Feezell, there are several key points, in terms of mechanisms, for a celebrity endorsement to sway a specific voter. First, the person backing a candidate needs to be familiar with the public, we need to know who this person is. Second, they need to be viewed favorably. We have to like or respect their opinion.

"Taylor Swift's influence really hinges on her familiarity and favorability, and in my opinion, her ability to access a segment of the electorate that is just coming into politics, which is young first-time voters who need to get registered," she said. "Now, someone they're familiar with and like is telling them where and how to register and how important it is."

While some voters celebrate a celebrity endorsement, others believe their favorite singer or sports star shouldn't weigh in on politics. Feezell says anytime a big name backs a political candidate, there seems to be a similar response.

"Some people don't like the convergence of their entertainment with their politics and in a world that is increasingly politicized, I can sympathize with that viewpoint. However, celebrities are under much more pressure today to pick a side because of the increased polarization in America," Feezell said. "Most are using their platform to advocate their views and support their candidates, which is their First Amendment right."

According to Feezell, research doesn't show a difference in celebrity influence between Democrats or Republicans, she says it strictly comes down to whether people are politically interested or not.

Feezell's previous research shows a significant correlation between one's preference for a genre of music and public opinion.

"We know through a lot of political communication research that messages are most effective on people with low levels of political interest and so in this experiment, I tried to get at that by asking people, hey if you had an hour of free time and you were in your car, would you listen to politics or music? Among those who prefer to listen to music, when presented with political endorsements by musicians, respondents become more supportive of that issue as a result."

The takeaway? Political information does not just come from traditional media, it comes from many non-political sources too.

"There's one piece (of research) in particular that looks at people who used to watch OPRAH and finds people who did are better able to represent their political self-interest on a survey than people who don't," Feezell said.

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