Political ads saturate our media during election cycles. While this is nothing new, it used be involve easily managed mailers and land-line calls. Now, we field text messages, cell phone calls, mailers, campaign emails, YouTube ads, social media ads, and on and on. It’s hard to avoid seeing political ads multiple times a day.
This overwhelming amount of information can lead us to delete messages without reading, ignore calls, mass-delete emails, and hover over the “skip” button on ads. Turns out, this barrage of information can get in the way of decision making.
Instead, many of us shortcut around ads and look to the opinions of people we trust or idolize. Famous actors, musicians, and athletes already help us gauge interest in food and fashion trends. It makes sense that when it comes to political campaigns, celebrity endorsements are enticing to bring attention to a candidate.
Celebrity Endorsements
Former President Barack Obama received major celebrity endorsements and fundraising back in 2008. The endorsements were influential enough that during the 2012 campaign, reporters obtained his alleged endorsement “wish list” of musicians, athletes, and actors. In 2016, celebrity endorsements during the primaries boomed, even creating rifts between actors from the same shows. The prominence prompted Rolling Stone to release an article titled “19 of Donald Trump’s Weirdest Celebrity Endorsements.” The celebrity endorsements in 2020 were even broader, including more stars familiar to younger voters.
Now, during the 2024 campaign, we’ve seen a long line of celebrity endorsements for Vice President Kamala Harris’ comparatively short presidential campaign. She’s received the rare, tacit endorsement of Beyoncé, who gave V.P. Harris permission to use the song “Freedom” in her campaign. Then, following the September 10, 2024, debate, famous “childless cat lady” Taylor Swift posted her endorsement of V.P. Harris and running mate, Gov. Tim Waltz, on Instagram.
Attention Versus Votes
Though Swift’s post has been ‘liked’ by more than 11 million people globally, we don’t actually know the effect her endorsement, or anyone else’s, will have on voters in the voting booth. A Harvard's Kennedy School study noted that when celebrities call for voter registration or poll worker sign-ups, those rates increase. But, as a Democratic strategist noted in 2020, “What’s really important about celebrities is that they help to attract an audience, very few people will support a candidate because of a celebrity’s endorsement.”
Swift’s post is a prime example of increasing engagement. In it, she explained her reasons for endorsing V.P. Harris, then encouraged people to do their own research and register to vote. In a follow up Instagram story, which stays active for only 24 hours, Swift included a link to vote.gov, a website directing people to their state voter registration agencies. She did numbers in those 24 hours, with nearly 406,000 people clicking through to the site, many of them young voters.
What we don’t know is whether her endorsement will garner more votes for Harris on November 5, 2024.
Finding Voters and Votes
To help a specific candidate or cause, rather than rouse general interest, traditional celebrity endorsements and ads are not enough. Media and tech algorithms increasingly narrow the parts of the internet to which we are exposed, so information needs to be directed to those various parts of the internet in order to spread. The current trend is to look to social media influencers. This is true both for progressive and conservative Super PACs. Even Russian Times staff has allegedly gotten in on the game.
According to PEW Research, among adults age 18 - 29, 39% report regularly getting their news from TikTok in 2024. Overall, about half of TikTok users, just under half of Facebook users, and nearly 60% of X (formerly known as Twitter) users regularly get their news from their preferred social media site. Close behind are more than a third of YouTube and Instagram users who regularly get their news from those social media platforms.
Influencers predominate over traditional media and journalists on many of these sites. Users often see influencers as more authentic and trustworthy, as they talk to their audience directly and frankly about their personal views and opinions. This can, well, influence an audience who otherwise agrees with an influencer’s opinions to also agree with their political opinions.
With these high viewer numbers, it’s no wonder campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, and political action committees (PACs) see the benefits of shifting strategies. But, where a candidate has limitations, prohibitions, and reporting requirements for campaign donations, such as reporting payments to firms booking influencers, PACs have more freedom to collect and use funds. In fact, super PACs are able to receive “unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions and other PACs,” over which they have broad spending power. Their main limitations are that money cannot go directly to candidates and they cannot coordinate spending with candidates.
Millions of super PAC dollars are now being directed to influencers who can spread a message while doing their makeup, dancing, or hiking. These influencers might have follower counts as small as 5,000 or 10,000 in demographics the super PAC sees as important to a campaign’s success. Turning Point USA, a far-right super PAC, has been engaging influencers and content creators since 2020. Progressive super PACs American Bridge and NextGen spent six figures each on influencers in the 2022 midterm election. In 2024, Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC, spent $1 million on influencer content from 150 creators while President Joe Biden was still the presumptive nominee.
Complicating things more than the PAC funding rules is the lack of regulation over influencers’ paid political content on social media. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) modernized its regulations in 2023, but commissioners ultimately chose to ignore the exponential growth of political messaging by influencers. This looks a lot like a loophole. While an influencer is required to disclose payment by a brand to make or promote content, they are not required to disclose what are, essentially, political campaign advertisements. This creates a major problem with transparency on social media platforms and risks a rise in disinformation.
Ultimately, it falls on the social media platform itself to regulate political influencers’ content and enforce those rules. Thus far, only TikTok bans political ads and content. Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, allows political advertisements and sponsored creator content from registered groups. Where platforms fail to adopt rules or fail to enforce them, it falls on influencers to maintain the trust of their audiences.
Related Resources
- FTC Announces Final 'Click to Cancel' Rule (FindLaw's Law and Daily Life)
- Ballot Battles Over ... Selfies? (FindLaw's Law and Daily Life)
- FindLaw's Voting Laws and Resources (FindLaw's Learn About the Law)
