During the highly volatile primary season, it sometimes feels like the caucus has become the red carpet.
There’s Chuck Norris kicking border patrol butt for Huckabee, Oprah Winfrey putting Obama in her book club, and Barbara Streisand singing Hillary’s praises.
While these big name endorsements certainly garner a lot of media attention, it’s questionable as to whether celebrities and high-profile religious and political leaders are worth a candidate’s time and money. In the end, do the big names really help sway our vote?
One would hope that even in our celebrity-obsessed culture we’d have more sense than to follow like sheep behind a famous person’s endorsement. And as it turns out, we do.
Even though a well-liked celeb like Oprah can sell books and make movies, it is dubious as to whether her support alone can pave the way to presidency. A recent study by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found that nearly seven in ten Americans say that if Winfrey were supporting a presidential candidate it would not influence their vote. Among the 30 percent who say they would be influenced by a Winfrey endorsement, 15 percent would be more likely to vote for the candidate and 15 percent would be less likely to do so. In essence, a null effect.
While some celebrities have no effect, others can have a negative one. Looking to land the notoriously fickle and hard to stereotype 18–24 voting segment (or the non-voting segment—less than 50 percent voted last year), politicians may seek popular celebrities support as a way to do so. But even if this group is young, they’re still not naive; celebrity endorsements may backfire. A 2007 study in the Journal of Political Marketing found that some young adults voted opposite what celebrities told them to, because they felt the celebrities lacked credibility and were only in it for themselves.
And maybe they’re right. Even though Ben Affleck went on tour with Gore, making it seem as if the star of Good Will Hunting and Shakespeare in Love is a die-hard public policy guy—he purportedly didn’t end up voting at all. And although Puff Daddy attempted to “rock the vote” in ’04, how much can the guy who raps, Lamp in Cancun, lounge in the Ritz (c’mon)/What you spent on your rent, I spent on my wrist (that’s right), really care about middle class issues?
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