(VitalNews.org) – Candidates for this year’s political election have been focusing on the support of celebrities as we’ve seen performances from Quavo, Megan Thee Stallion, and Bon Iver at Kamala Harris events. Kid Rock and Amber Rose were featured celebrities at the Republican National Convention.
A new study that was done by Harvard showed celebrities are successful at generating online buzz and can influence elections. Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation said that there is “rigorous evidence that celebrity voices are incredibly powerful in promoting civic engagement and altering polling numbers.”
Ashley Spillane, the study’s author, said “Right now, young voters have relatively low levels of trust in a lot of leaders and institutions, including traditional news media, but celebrities are often a rare exception”
Spillane stated that America falls short when looking at how many eligible voters actually do vote. The United States ranks thirty-one out of fifty for nations voter participation. She stated that “Voting should be the trendy, cool thing to do.”
Celebrities serve as an effective method for getting people to see how trendy and cool voting can be. The study said that celebrities are “uniquely positioned to empower everyday Americans.”
It’s also shown that poll worker volunteer and online voter registration increased when a celebrity promoted voting. Celebrities have been used across the years to help promote voting and push younger Americans to take part in the democratic process.
In 2018, Taylor Swift posted an Instagram story that asked people to vote, and it resulted in two hundred and fifty thousand people registering to vote over the course of three days.
Offline and online engagements from celebrities have been another marketing ploy by politicians, and it seems to be working. Some celebrities are more open to endorsing candidates or pushing people to vote than others, as online endorsement could potentially backfire.
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