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Celebrities flocked to Kamala Harris, but did it do more harm than good?
By Karl Quinn
On one measure at least, Kamala Harris won the US presidential election by a landslide: celebrity endorsements.
Some of the biggest names in entertainment – Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, George Clooney, Beyoncé, Charli XCX, Will Ferrell, Harrison Ford – queued up to lend their brand, and ostensibly their fans, to the cause of making Harris the first female president of the United States.
Beyoncé at a Kamala Harris campaign event in Texas last month. Credit: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
But with Harris resoundingly beaten, you have to ask if they did more harm than good.
It certainly appears they fed into a narrative beloved of conservatives: In the Divided States of America, the Democrats are now the party of the bicoastal elites, while the Republicans speak for ordinary people in the vast middle.
Back in July, the celebrity who did most to pave the way for Harris’ tilt was George Clooney, who wrote in The New York Times urging Joe Biden to step aside, in order to “enliven our party and wake up voters who, long before the June debate, had already checked out”. Less than two weeks later, Biden did precisely that.
Brat pack: Kamala Harris and Charli XCX.
The following day, English musician Charli XCX tweeted, “Kamala IS Brat”, a reference to her latest album. The post was viewed more than 60 million times. But while the singer has become one of the year’s breakout acts, it didn’t help Harris.
Immediately after the September 11 presidential debate, which most analysts judged a resounding win for Harris, Taylor Swift posted that she would be voting for the Democrat.
On Instagram, that post, in which she signed off as a “childless cat lady” (a response to J.D. Vance’s sneering jibe at leading female Democrats), has been liked more than 11 million times. But did it shift the dial in any way? Maybe. But not in a way that helped Harris.
According to polling site YouGov, before her endorsement, “75 per cent of Democrats and 43 per cent of Republicans viewed Swift favourably”. After it, “79 per cent of Democrats but only 26 per cent of Republicans like Swift”. In other words, it was welcomed by those already likely to support Harris but had the opposite effect on those who were not.
This week, Harrison Ford – who played a president in 1997’s Air Force One – urged people to back Harris and running mate Tim Walz. “These two people believe in the rule of law,” Ford intoned gravelly and gravely. “They believe in science. They believe that when you govern, you do so for all Americans, they believe that we are in this together. These are ideas I believe in. These are people I can get behind.”
Like many throwing their weight behind the Harris campaign, his was an appeal to ideals and the big ideas that underpin the American dream. But for people struggling with cost-of-living pressures, these abstract concepts hold less sway than those cushioned by Hollywood pay cheques might imagine.
According to exit polling conducted by CBS, 69 per cent of Trump voters believe the US economy is in bad shape (compared with 29 per cent of those who voted for Harris). Only 24 per cent of all voters believe they are better off financially than four years ago, while 45 per cent think things are worse. White voters without a college degree backed Trump by 65 per cent, to 34 per cent for Harris.
None of this proves definitively that celebrity endorsements worked against Harris. But it does suggest they did little more than make those already predisposed to her feel in good company. And they might have confirmed for others the view that she did not speak for them and their concerns.
Kid Rock performs at the Republican National Convention in July.Credit: Bloomberg
It’s not as if Trump didn’t have celebrity supporters. Kid Rock performed for him, Joe Rogan’s podcast gave him three hours, and Elon Musk poured millions into the campaign and repeatedly endorsed him.
Of course, Trump is the highest-profile celebrity in the US. He may be loathed in New York, where he made his name and (questionable) fortune, but to those flyover states, he is the man who burst into orange-hued life on the reality TV show The Apprentice.
In the end, it’s not celebrity endorsements per se that worked against Harris. It’s that the celebrities spoke for a set of values – idealistic, egalitarian, broad-minded – that did not resonate with a great swath of Americans. And they did so from a position of economic and educational privilege to which they could not relate.
Trump and his backers, meanwhile, parlayed a myth of self-made resilience and individualism, and a distrust of outsiders and authority. To the many Americans feeling the pinch and looking for someone to blame, that rang much truer than any celebrity endorsement.