Why Celebrity Endorsements Don’t Always Deliver Votes, and Might Work Against Candidates

From Kamala Harris getting Charli XCX’s “brat” designation to Taylor Swift’s sly embrace of the “childless cat lady” label on her endorsement Instagram post to Beyoncé’s passionate onstage embrace, the Harris campaign’s three-month existence was characterized by a frisson of celebrity enthusiasm. But after the results poured in, plenty of critics, friend and foe, wondered whether any of the razzle-dazzle was worth it. How can a “flawlessly run” campaign capture the hearts of the internet but fail to permeate the polling places?

It turns out that celebrity endorsements are rarely as convincing as you might think. An October survey of Ohio registered voters found that Swift’s endorsement had a net negative impact, with 24% in the red state saying it made them less enthusiastic about Harris as a candidate and only 14% saying it made them more. David J. Jackson, the political scientist who helped conduct the survey, told Vanity Fair that the emerging consensus is that celebrity campaigns might motivate those who are already partisan, but they do very little persuading.

“We’ve got some clear findings that celebrity endorsements of presidential candidates work through a partisan lens, and that likability and credibility matter a lot too,” he said. “Taylor Swift can be perceived as incredibly credible among her fans because she sings about things in a way that’s meaningful to them. Or Elon Musk might be highly credible because he’s perceived as a successful business guy.”

To understand why the voters didn’t necessarily fill out their ballots with starry eyes, VF reached out to Justine Bateman, an actor, director, and preeminent observer of America’s fame-industrial complex. Her 2018 book, Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, was her account of what she learned about the true nature of celebrity from research and her journey from sitcom It girl in the 1980s to a “formerly famous” woman and how it has affected her own view of the political world. In 2021, Bateman directed her first feature film, Violet, and late last year she wrapped on her second, entitled Look.

Vanity Fair: What do you think about the role celebrity endorsements played in this election cycle and the role they play in politics more broadly?

Justine Bateman: The first thing that came to mind was celebrities showing up for charities in order that more attention be paid to the charity, that there’d be more visibility for that charity. When I was famous, it was always like a matter-of-fact inclusion in your [schedule] that you would bring attention to various charities by going to their events. As far as politics go, this is just my opinion, again, just like a charity, it can bring attention to that candidate.

Some of that did happen this time around. For example, hundreds of thousands of people have registered to vote over the last few years because of celebrities sharing links.

That’s great.

In Fame, you talk about 2000 as a real turning point for celebrity status. Social media didn’t exist yet, but media changes turned fame into a much more confrontational and industrialized thing. The omnipresence of celebrities could explain why people say things along the lines of “Oh, a famous person endorsing a candidate is the famous person telling me what to think.”

People really don’t want to be told what to think. That’s why voter registration is a good place for it. But the rest of it is, “Thanks for your suggestion.”

When it comes to products, celebrity endorsements really work. If a famous person endorses a product, people will buy that product. But an idea isn’t the same as a product.

Have you ever read René Girard? He makes a really good point about this. His thing is mimetic desire, and his theory is that you come into this world not knowing what you want at all. You have the things that are baked into your DNA that you want, but the rest of it—what kind of woman to be with, what kind of man to be with, what kind of car to have, what kind of standing you want in society? You look around at what means something to other people, and then you want to mimic it.

Then he gets into this sort of meta-mimetic desire where about a person, like a celebrity, you want to be, so you will buy what they buy. You will drive the car.

How do you feel about the way that viral fame and the quest for virality has changed the way that we think about how we relate to famous people?

Well, I guess that depends on what one thinks a famous person is, and who is famous. I don’t see a lot of videos being passed around that have, let’s just say traditionally famous people in them, right? I mean, “Charlie bit my finger,” I don’t even know that kid’s name. As far as what goes viral, I think it’s like, you’ve got that one shot to fly right into the Death Star, right into the center of the spaceship.

Back to your whole endorsement thing, maybe what’s most interesting about it in 2024 is who [the Harris campaign] picked. Because yes, of course, Beyoncé. She’s enormously well known, of course. I’m just posing this question, I don’t actually know. Would the better choice be people who are famous in a smaller, but much more potent way?

Fame is escapism, but escapism isn’t a great feeling to inspire good voting choices.

Another scenario I described in the book was a restaurant. Everybody’s being themselves doing their thing to the extent you would be with whoever you’re sitting across the table with. And then Brad Pitt walks in the restaurant and a wave of shifting happens. It flows through the whole room, and everybody is suddenly not being who they were 30 seconds ago. They are something different now, and they get into this state of being in fame’s presence. Do you want people in that state for what you’re trying to accomplish? It is a very different state than I think you want people to be in to receive your messages about policy and how your administration would affect their life in the next four years.

You can take a page from Hollywood, from film industry casting for that. It’s maybe a good parallel, it just came to mind. So I’ll just say it out loud and see if it works: Many times you’ll have a film not work, have the public not respond to a film, and then the executives or the producers or whatever say, “I don’t understand. We put all the right elements into it. We had this actor and this actress and all this, and we had this great cast and everything, and how did this not work?” And it’s like, well, sometimes that’s not what makes a great film to have all these stars. The public is unpredictable, big stars are unpredictable.

Art is unpredictable. I think that type of Hollywood executive logic—following a formula to make a ton of money, being surprised when it doesn’t work out as planned—is proliferating in the world, outside of Hollywood. So we can think about the campaign like that—we cast all the big names, did the film deliver?

There’s also the well-known people who are announcing on social media, who are endorsing like they’re newspapers. I’m not talking about the people that are at the rallies. It also seems awkward—I don’t know if people feel pressure to do this? This is the national vote for President. It’s nice that we all get to do it anonymously. You shouldn’t have to say who you voted for, and you shouldn’t have to tell anyone about your medical history if you don’t want to. You know what I mean? I don’t feel compelled to tell anybody anything.

Didn’t there used to be a sense that it’s impolite to ask someone about who they voted for?

“Don’t ask an older woman her age,” that kind of thing, right?

Exactly. I guess that leads us to an even bigger question. How can a society use art to have conversations about what we want the future to be like when we can’t really talk or understand each other across the big divides?

Hopefully there are enough places, publications, cities, whatever the group is, that agree, and then keep that as their North Star, regardless of what anyone’s political leanings are. I think it’s a mistake in the arts to try to appeal to all people. I think it’s a big, big, big mistake, because you wind up making something forgettable. It’s okay to be specific, and maybe it appeals to only half a million people or only a million people, and it’s great. That’s your group. It’s like different food. What if all food tasted the same? Who would want that?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.