Oprah, Beyoncé and Taylor: They 'lost' in midterms, so what about celebrity political pull in 2020?

Tuesday’s midterm elections were a mixed bag for Washington pols – Democrats won back the House while Republicans kept the Senate – but they were something of a bust for Hollywood celebrities.

Oprah Winfrey’s support of Stacey Abrams in the Georgia gubernatorial race? Beyonce’s endorsement of Beto O’Rourke in Texas? Taylor Swift backing Phil Bredesen in a Senate race in Tennessee? Close, so close … but no cigars for their chosen candidates.

Even actress Olivia Wilde’s mom, journalist Leslie Cockburn, lost her race for a Virginia House seat despite her daughter’s loving endorsement.

More: Olivia Wilde praises ‘incredible’ mom Leslie Cockburn after congressional loss in Virginia

If nothing else, the Tuesday elections prove again that the influence of celebrities in American politics is rather less than it appears given the amount of attention their endorsements and campaign appearances usually attract.

“Celebrities don’t really have these huge, overall game-changing effects,” says David Jackson, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University. “We shouldn’t expect them to.” They might help in very close races, but their net effect is “always going to be on the margins,” he adds.

Besides, the big-name endorsements were made in races in the deep-red South, says Mark Harvey, graduate program director at the University of St. Mary in Kansas and author of the 2017 book, “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-based Advocacy.” He says his research suggests celebrity influence is more persuasive in advocating for specific issues rather than individual political candidates.

“My hypothesis is that in a lot of these (midterm) races, you’re looking at the South where there’s an ingrained culture that at this moment in political history is very skeptical of coastal elites,” Harvey says. “One question I have is to what extent are people in this very conservative, anti-elitist culture rejecting Hollywood or entertainment people at face value?

“When you’re talking about Republicans versus Democrats, you’re talking about tribes, not issues, and it’s hard to persuade a tribe.”

So what does that portend for the 2020 presidential election campaign? Will celebs be even more out front about their politics, or will more of them go back to keeping their preferences to themselves? Don’t count on that.

Peter Levine, an associate dean at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University in Massachusetts, says most political scientists start with skepticism that celebrity endorsements make a big difference – and the midterms only proved them right. There are just too many other factors in play to pin down a loss or a win on a celeb’s say-so.

“Does (a celeb endorsement) hurt? I don’t think you can conclude that from these results,” Levine says. “My big-picture read is that the midterm elections were pretty much in line with predictions. I don’t see any evidence (of a celebrity negative effect); they just did not have a big positive effect.”

But what might change about the partisan breakdown of celebrities and politics? Democrats usually get the lion’s share, in quality and quantity. But Republicans have a reality TV star-turned-President Donald Trump as their main celeb, and he’s proved he doesn’t need (or want) anyone else in his spotlight during a campaign.

“One thing celebrities did this election was get people out to vote – there was a huge turnout, which is good for everyone,” says veteran Hollywood public-relations expert Howard Bragman of LaBrea Media.

“If I were the Democrats, I would use celebrities (in 2020) for grassroots-level work, knocking on doors, getting people registered, getting them to show up at polls and getting them involved in the political process. That’s the greatest value they bring in my mind.”

For the record, the only proven case of a celebrity making a difference in the outcome of an election remains Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2007-08 Democratic primary campaign, which is believed to have moved about 1 million votes to Obama, according to a study of the impact of celebrity endorsements in presidential politics.

But it didn’t work out that way for Democrat Stacey Abrams, who aimed to become the first African-American woman governor but fell just short (although there are still votes to be counted and there may be a runoff next month) against Republican Brian Kemp in Georgia.

Winfrey not only endorsed Abrams, she showed up in Georgia to campaign for her, including knocking on doors to remind people to vote. Even if Abrams eventually concedes, it seems clear that Winfrey helped put Abrams closer to the winner’s box than she would have been otherwise given the scarlet politics of Georgia and alleged efforts to suppress the votes of African-American Democrats.

In Texas, Democrat Beto O’Rourke also came very close to unseating incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz after a campaign that saw the Democrat surging in polls and fundraising even in red-meat Texas. Then, at literally the very last minute, Houston-native Beyonce endorsed him on Election Day on Instagram.

Just hours before polls were set to close in Texas, she donned a black-and-white baseball cap reading “Beto for Senate” and told her 119 million followers to vote. “We need you. We all need each other, because when we are truly united we are unstoppable.”

On Tuesday night, some fans blamed the superstar for O’Rourke’s loss, saying it was too little, too late.

And in Tennessee, no single endorsement made bigger waves than the one Democrat Phil Bredesen received courtesy of Nashville’s Swift, who also denounced his Republican opponent, Marsha Blackburn, in her first-ever political endorsement or statement of any kind.

But Bredesen was soundly defeated – and Swift was swiftly mocked online by prominent Blackburn supporters. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t move the needle.

“If that side doesn’t win, there’s a tendency to make easy conclusions that the celebrity endorsements didn’t work,” Jackson said. “It’s more complicated than that.”

Nor does it mean that Swift (or Oprah or Beyonce) will give up now. Swift is unlikely to return to “The Old Taylor” – the one who wouldn’t touch political matters with a 10-foot pole; instead the “new” Taylor could continue to make waves and wield significant influence in the years to come.

One possible Swift effect, says Amy Becker, a communication professor at Loyola University in Maryland, is her ability to inspire voter registration. If some of Swift’s young fans registered to vote because of her this time, they could become more regular voters as they grow into age brackets that tend to vote reliably.

“She might have brought some other people into the political system that wouldn’t have thought about voting before,” Becker says.

The Oprah-endorses-Obama example is too specific to be applied more broadly, political scientists say. Paul Brewer, a communication professor at the University of Delaware, points out Winfrey wasn’t trying to change people’s entrenched political identities – their tribal identities so to speak.

Instead, she was trying to persuade primary voters who probably already agreed with Obama on most policy matters and only needed a “modest nudge” to go one way or another, as Levine puts it.

Not so in a general election race for the U.S. Senate. “Swift (wasn’t) going to make the average Republican vote for a Democrat,” Brewer says. Maybe celebs can help politicians squeak out a victory in a close case, he said, but “this was not a marginal case in the end.”

And even though Swift has gotten credit for encouraging scores of young people to register to vote, these same people might have registered anyway, Levine says.

So does anybody expect candidates in 2020 to tell the likes of Oprah to cool it? Not a chance. Besides, coming close, especially in the Abrams-versus-Kemp race, is itself an achievement, Harvey says.

“She’s a progressive black woman candidate in Georgia in a place where people like to vote for white men who are conservative, and the fact she’s gone this distance is miraculous,” he says. “If Oprah didn’t push her over the top, it’s still quite substantial that an African-American woman got this close. It’s a hell of a run for a woman; they never got that far before.”

Besides, what candidate is going to say: “Oprah, please don’t campaign for me,” jokes Harvey.

Advises Levine: “I think candidates (in 2020) will probably be glad if Oprah shows up, but they shouldn’t count on it as a strategy.”

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