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Nine months from Election Day, Joe Biden's re-election campaign must be getting more and more heated. The US economy's recovery from the pandemic is the envy of the world, but consumers remain gloomy. The number of jobs has increased and inflation has decreased, but the president has received few loans. Meanwhile, efforts to maintain a firm line with Israel have done nothing to stem heavy criticism from young voters. It may come as no surprise that Donald Trump is leading in the latest polls of all the major battleground states.
With old strategies having so far failed, and a growing sense in some quarters that it may be "tremors" as much as policies that will change the outcome this year, the campaign has set its sights in a different way. to win votes: an endorsement from global pop megastar Taylor Swift.
The case for taking on Swift is clear. A culturally significant figure who has previously endorsed Democratic candidates is coming off the end of a tour so big it had a measurable impact on the American economy. In recent months, her romance with one of the star players in next weekend's Super Bowl has helped make her presence felt in almost every corner of American culture.
So would Swift's endorsement boost Biden?
I will start with the optimistic case. The artist's carefully crafted all-American image has extremely broad appeal. According to data from a Morning Consult survey last year, her fan base may be skewed under 40, but it includes Democrats and Republicans, high and low incomes, people of all ethnicities and is focused on the suburbs where US elections are now won and lost. The fact that Swift started her career in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, and began in country music, has given her enduring popularity in red America.
And in the US – which is unlike age-polarized Britain – around 40 percent of under-40s backed Trump in 2020, meaning there's a sizable group of persuasive Swifties for Democrats to tap into. they follow them.
But what does history tell us about what really happens when celebrities endorse candidates in America?
A 2008 study of the impact of Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries found that her endorsement provided an additional 1 million votes, enough to push her past Hillary Clinton.
However, a single party primary is a very different animal than a hotly contested election with a deeply divided electorate, and other studies are less optimistic about how endorsements work under these conditions.
An analysis by David Jackson, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University, found that a celebrity endorsement can also have polarizing effects. Jackson found that while Democrats tended to say that an endorsement of a presidential candidate by a liberal celebrity would increase their support for the candidate, this was more than offset by Republicans claiming it would sway them. And endorsements of all kinds tend to repel moderates more than attract them.
The Biden campaign will be hoping it can escape those exchanges because of Swift's bipartisan appeal, but that could start to change thanks to what we might call the "Bud Light effect."
Last year, Republican activists successfully turned light beer from a wildly popular soft drink into a toxic brand as they pushed back against an ad campaign featuring a prominent transgender influencer.
Similar efforts are now being made to suggest that Swift is part of a plot to keep Biden in the White House, and the campaign appears to be working, with YouGov finding in December that Trump 2020 voters viewed him negatively, while in October they gave that much. favorable evaluations. If Swift is seen as placed on one side of the culture war, her utility as a vote-getter will diminish, and she may even give some to the other side.
But demonizing Swift is also a dangerous strategy for Republicans, whose repeated efforts to stoke anger around celebrities and familiar, mainstream products risk alienating moderate voters from Trump. As Swift sings in her 2022 hit song, "Karma is a relaxing thought."
Ultimately, I suspect this entire chapter will generate far more buzz than votes. In a long and hard-fought race, where both sides are using every political machine at their disposal, Swift's role in the election is unlikely to grow beyond that of a featured artist./ Adapted from Financial Times , Pamphlet
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