Popular Culture’s Failed Presidential Campaign
The election of Donald Trump signifies a lot of things—is one of them a rebuke to popular culture’s political influence? Hillary Clinton lined up A-list entertainers for fundraising, endorsements, and performances, from Katy Perry to Lena Dunham to Bruce Springsteen to Beyoncé and Jay Z. Donald Trump, a TV star himself, boasted fewer well-known entertainers in his camp, and in the campaign’s final days made fun of Clinton for relying on celebrities.
David J. Jackson, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University, studies the influence of celebrities on elections. In a 2015 survey of 804 likely general-election voters in Ohio, he asked people whether particular celebrity endorsements would make people more or less likely to support a candidate. In almost all the cases, the net effect of any particular endorsement on a sample of the general electorate was negative—voters were less likely to support the endorsed candidate. But the effect often switched to positive when you just focused on demographics already favorable to any given celebrity.
I spoke with him on Thursday for a post-mortem on celebrity’s role in the election. This conversation has been edited.
Spencer Kornhaber: You’ve studied the intersection of politics and celebrity and popular culture for a long time. What were the things to know about the subject going into this election?
Initially my research focused on looking at the
