Hollywood celebrities have spent years treating presidential elections like another stop on the publicity circuit, complete with endorsements, appearances and impassioned messages telling fans which candidate deserves their vote.
But after 2024, some famous faces appear to be reconsidering whether any of it actually works.
A new report from The Hill indicates that entertainers may take a quieter approach when the next presidential election arrives. The calculation isn’t especially mysterious: political endorsements can alienate part of an entertainer’s audience while producing surprisingly little evidence that voters actually change their minds.
“I think celebrities are seeing backlash and making a calculated decision that this is just not worth it for them,” longtime Republican strategist Susan Del Percio said.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is one prominent example.
Johnson, who publicly endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020, has now said he intends to keep his political views private.
“I’ve learned I’m going to keep my politics to myself,” the 54-year-old actor said in a recent interview.
His frustration extends to the political environment itself.
“Politics is omnipresent, and it’s forever. I don’t like it. I hate it at times. I hate the slinging. I hate all the bulls*** that comes with it,” Johnson said.
Paris Hilton has reached a similar conclusion, saying politics “is something I feel like celebrities should not be discussing.”
The interesting part is that this reassessment isn’t confined to entertainers who have avoided partisan politics. Jennifer Lawrence, a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, has also questioned what celebrity political commentary actually accomplishes.
“Election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for,” Lawrence said.
That led her to an unusually direct question: “So then what am I doing?”
Lawrence said that offering another political opinion may simply “add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.”
The 2024 presidential election provides an obvious case study.
Vice President Kamala Harris received support from an extraordinary collection of entertainment figures during her campaign against Trump. Yet Harris ultimately failed to win any of the battleground states, according to Democratic strategist Jordan C. Brown.
Melvin Williams, an associate professor of communication and media studies at Pace University, described the campaign as a “turning point in celebrity political engagement.”
In Williams’s assessment, Harris’s extensive roster of famous supporters sometimes competed with the candidate herself for attention.
“Harris was overshadowed by her celebrity endorsers, and she was deeply criticized by the public for her excessive use of celebrities,” Williams said.
That creates a peculiar campaign problem. Celebrity appearances are supposed to attract attention to the candidate. If the celebrity becomes the attraction instead, the campaign can end up generating headlines about its famous supporters rather than its own message.
Williams also believes the public’s relationship with celebrity political activism has changed.
“People are tired of celebrities telling them how to think politically and how to vote, especially when private citizens view celebrities as being detached from their daily challenges and their socio-economic realities,” he said.
There is research suggesting famous entertainers can exert some political influence, but the effect appears limited.
Jessica Feezell, a University of New Mexico political science professor, said celebrity persuasion is most likely to work among people with relatively little political interest or those who are new to politics. Their political views may be less firmly established, making them more receptive to someone they already admire.
For everybody else, celebrity endorsements run into something considerably stronger than star power: existing political beliefs.
Feezell said the effect is generally small because political attitudes are rooted in “much more enduring values.”
Brown put the electoral evidence even more plainly.
“If these celebrities could affect the way people vote, Hillary Clinton would be a two-term president. Kamala Harris would have been the president,” he said.
