The 2024 presidential election is, as best as anyone can tell from the inexact art of polling, essentially a toss-up. No one knows who is going to win on Tuesday (and we probably won’t know for a while afterwards, for that matter). In lieu of any definitive edge in numbers, both prognosticators and casual observers are resorting to vibes – that amorphous, indefinable and personal sense of who has the momentum, where the energy is shifting, what feels true. And for the candidates, one guaranteed way to assert a vibe – albeit maybe not the one they intended – is to recruit arguably the defining element of modern American politics: celebrity.
In the past two weeks alone, both Trump and Harris have assembled their respective famous avengers (including in Harris’s case, the actual Avengers), to stump for their campaign. Harris, unsurprisingly, boasts far more and higher-profile endorsements, including but not limited to: Taylor Swift, LeBron James, George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Marc Anthony, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tyler Perry, Usher, Lizzo, Eminem and the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, who released a video this week rebuking the racist comments made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden. During the final weeks of the campaign, Harris was joined on the trail by Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Maggie Rogers, Willie Nelson, Jennifer Lopez and Oprah, among others.
What to make of the roster? On the one hand, it suggests a level of popular enthusiasm for Harris in strong contrast to Trump, who has trotted out his usual stable of ex-wrestlers and a handful of actors. Celebrities joining the Trump campaign in the past month include Kid Rock, Elon Musk, Hulk Hogan, Dennis Quaid, Zachary Levi, the rapper Kodak Black, Dr Phil, the former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and country singer Jason Aldean. Celebrity endorsements are one way to measure the vibes in an election whose polls are too close – and, for a large swath of the electorate either scarred or delighted by 2016, too untrustworthy – to reasonably make out the frontrunner, and on the level of star power, Harris certainly has the edge.
But a bulwark of celebrity support also presents what Shamira Ibrahim, writing for the Guardian just after Swift’s much-coveted endorsement in September, called a “double-edged sword” of Hollywood glitz. Endorsements may gin up enthusiasm among a star’s fanbase, but they also play into Republicans’ arguments that Democrats are the party of the coastal elites. (It should be noted, however, that Trump, a celebrity by trade, has not shied away from any semi-famous endorsement, even posting an AI deepfake Swift endorsement that she later condemned.)
It also gives the impression of desperation – either on behalf of the campaign or the celebrities – for relevancy in an election that has been relatively light on substantive issues (again, an unfair double standard for the Trump campaign, but a complaint lodged by many in Harris’s own party). As Harris has stumped for her expanded child tax credit, building back the middle class, restoring reproductive freedoms and “not going back”, many headlines have focused on her guests – the beatific presence of Beyoncé chief among them, giving uncanny flashbacks to the final self-satisfied days of Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
All this celebrity speechifying, while there is still little evidence to support the notion that celebrity endorsements make much of a difference. The gold standard example of celebrity influence remains Oprah supporting Barack Obama in 2008 – her first presidential endorsement, credited with bringing in about 1m votes for the then-Illinois senator. But that was during the Democratic primary, when engaged Democratic voters were largely deciding between Obama and Clinton, not the general election between Obama and John McCain. For general elections, celebrity effect remains difficult to quantify, and more or less minor. According to a recent YouGov survey, only 11% of Americans report that a celebrity has caused them to reconsider their stance on a political issue, and only 7% say an endorsement has led them to vote for a certain candidate. Democrats are far more likely to say that celebrities weighing in on politics helps democracy, though still less than half of them do – 41% compared with 12% for independents and 7% for Republicans.
Where celebrities can make a difference is in attracting fundraising, attention and participation, if not necessarily shifting a vote. After Swift posted her endorsement of Harris in September, 406,000 people clicked her link to Vote.gov, which directs people to state voting websites (though it’s unknown how many followed through and actually registered). A 2024 study by the Harvard Kennedy School found that celebrities can increase voter registration or poll worker signups with their platforms, particularly for younger voters disillusioned with older voices or institutions. One cited example was when Kylie Jenner posted a non-partisan voter registration link in 2020; the site later reported a 1,500% increase in traffic compared with the day before and an 80% increase in total users registering to vote. As David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, put it to CBS 58: “Overall, celebrities would like to think they could influence voter behavior, but they are more valuable as fundraising tools and door-opening opportunities to their followers.”
Registering to vote is, while not nothing, also not the same as actually going to vote, let alone voting for a celebrity’s preferred candidate. But when the election may come down to a handful of counties in a few states, in an election projected to feature record voter turnout from gen Z, the vibe is urgent. There’s a sense of desperation, trying to get every single voter over the finish line – maybe a Maggie Rogers fan in Michigan, or a Beyoncé fan in Houston, or a secretly Harris-leaning woman moved by Julia Roberts’s ad, although it’s admittedly hard to fathom how a voter either undecided or tuned out would 1) pay attention to just the rally with said celebrity or 2) seriously reconsider not voting for Trump because of it. (In reverse, it’s hard to imagine the Hogan or Quaid diehards on the fence, but maybe they exist!)
In the end, given the lack of evidence – yet – on a celebrity actually getting people to vote their way, the meaning of all these endorsements goes back to vibes. Maybe Harris’s overwhelming advantage in celebrity firepower feels like an actual advantage, maybe it feels ominously out of touch. Whether you view the endorsements as a good thing or an omen is, in these final days of the campaign, really just how you feel.
