NBA superstar LeBron James endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Sunday.
“When I think about the kinds of policies and ideas the kids in my foundation need from our government, the choice is clear,” James wrote in a Business Insider op-ed. “That candidate is Hillary Clinton.”
That’s it, folks. The election is over. There’s no way Donald Trump can come back from this.
I’m kidding, of course. Like many campaign-related news stories, this won’t affect the polls much.
Surprisingly, it may end up hurting Clinton and James.
In 2010, two studies from North Carolina State University evaluated the effects of celebrity endorsements for political candidates.
“In one of the studies, for example, we found that by exposing young people to a celebrity endorsement, they liked the candidate less and were less likely to vote for him,” Michael Cobb, an associate professor of political science at N.C. State, said in 2010.
When a celebrity endorses a candidate, it can actually backfire on the celebrity. Supporters of one party don’t reconsider their politics if a celebrity endorses someone of the opposite party — they like the celebrity less.
“Self-identified Democrats who were told in a study that George Clooney endorsed a Republican candidate reported that they liked him less and found him less attractive,” Cobb said.
“In short, celebrities are unable to directly affect political outcomes but they risk harming their reputations by trying,” the paper says.
That doesn’t mean all celebrity endorsements are useless to politicians. Star power can still help a candidate draw more people to a rally or fundraiser. In primaries, when party isn’t a factor, endorsements might help a candidate stand out.
For example, one analysis found that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama in the 2008 primary helped him get 1 million extra votes.
But that kind of star power is rare. “No one celebrity right now has the power Oprah had at her peak,” Craig Garthwaite told the Boston Globe in 2015. Garthwaite, with Northwestern University, authored the Oprah analysis.
Perhaps Michael Jordan would have that kind of star power if he had come out for a candidate in a primary. But Jordan is famously apolitical, rumored to have once said something along the lines of “Republicans buy shoes, too,” referring to his branded products.
If the N.C. State studies are right, that attitude is smart business sense for Jordan.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
