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Old-School Celebrities Could Not Move the Needle

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In an election season in which both parties sought out any possible edge, Democrats clung to one seemingly clear-cut advantage: Celebrities including Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen broke hard for that party, even as voters did not.

President-elect Donald J. Trump had his own famous supporters, drawing from a more masculine cohort, with figures like Kanye West and Mel Gibson, as well as less mainstream acts like Kid Rock and Jon Voight, also weighing in with their endorsements. The result was a split-screen of American celebrity — two sets of famous people for two halves of the country. But by and large, the biggest names in entertainment said Vice President Kamala Harris should be elected to the nation’s highest office.

In the end, it did not seem to matter much.

Ms. Harris was decisively defeated on Tuesday, despite the backing of a megastar like Beyoncé.

On the singer’s Instagram page, one commenter put it succinctly.

“America is tired,” wrote Albert Pennachio, an independent voter who lives in Statesville, N.C. “And we don’t deva what celebrities think anymore.”

It wasn’t always this way: Celebrity endorsements used to seemingly carry substantial weight, with influential figures like Oprah Winfrey helping to magnify lesser-known candidates (such as Barack Obama in 2008). But that sway seems to have lessened as influencers, onetime “micro”-celebrities and podcasters like Joe Rogan — a former comedian with amorphous, largely libertarian political views — have gained bigger audiences. (Mr. Rogan endorsed Mr. Trump on Monday, but only after some 80 million people had already voted early.)

Chris Lehane, a former Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House, said that the move away from following celebrity viewpoints was part of a broader, generational shift from traditional means of communication and advertising toward a more fluid, fast-moving cultural landscape.

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Old-School Celebrities Could Not Move the Needle
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