Musk vs. Swift: Will Elon’s payments to voters shift the balance?

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

In September, The Fulcrum shared a new study that offers insights into voter perceptions of political candidates and similar evaluations of celebrities — a study that takes a different approach than the usual favorable/unfavorable polling questions.

This unique study applies insights from the subconscious, human social perception process known as the Stereotype Content Model, or more commonly, the Warmth & Competence model. This widely published and validated framework was developed by social psychologists explains how our perceptions of others trigger predictable emotions and behaviors toward individuals and social groups.

In short, perceptions of warmth reflect friendliness or trustworthiness, and while perceptions of competence reflect capabilities or effectiveness. We admire and are attracted to others we view to be both warm and competent, while we reject and avoid those perceived to be cold and incompetent.

This research is particularly relevant as we approach Nov. 5 as more and more celebrities are endorsing and even actively campaigning for the candidate of their choice.

Two of the most famous celebrities, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk, were evaluated in the 2024 US Celebrity & Politician Warmth & Competence Study to determine the degree to which their endorsements would be likely to influence their admirers. The study found that Swift is somewhat more admired than Musk (46 percent vs. 39 percent), but Swifties are somewhat less likely to be influenced by celebrity endorsements than Musk admirers (21 percent vs. 25 percent).

Comparing this to other well-known celebrities: Barack Obama was admired by 51 percent of respondents and, among them, 25 percent agree that celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on their views and behavior. In contrast, the figures for George W. Bush and Beyonce Knowles are 41 percent and 37 percent in admiration, while 26 percent and 30 percent of those respondents agree they are significantly influenced by endorsements, respectively.

What the study did not account for was the unprecedented and perhaps illegal action that Musk took last week in Harrisburg, Pa., when he announced he is willing to pay voters:

“We want to try to get over a million, maybe 2 million voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment. … We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election.”

Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shapiro (D) has already stated that law enforcement should “take a look at” these proposed voter payments.

“Musk obviously has a right to be able to express his views. He’s made it very, very clear that he supports Donald Trump. I don’t. Obviously we have a difference of opinion,” Shapiro said, adding: “I don’t deny him that, right, but when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions.”

These payment seemed to be “ clearly illegal ” based on federal law 52 U.S.C. 10307(c), which says that any individual who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

While this new study shows how social perceptions have shifted the American electorate from voting based on personal interests to voting based on their perceived inclusion on a social “team,” it certainly did not account for payments by celebrities to voters. What the study did find is that this type of partisan-ideological sorting played out in recent decades and has led to the feeling that every aspect of the social world can be divided into supporting one of those teams.

Social science researchers have established a deep body of research on the effects of polarization on partisanship. It is clear that though any individual's choice to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in November may be about their policies, it is undoubtedly also tied to their sense of identity — to a much higher degree than it would have been decades ago. Similarly, it is reasonable to consider whether the well-established indicators of trust and capability have become more influential to voters than policy positions or social issues.

This shift poses a thought-provoking question: As we move toward the 2024 election, could public figures outside of traditional politics start to wield even more significant influence on voter sentiment? And more importantly, what does it say about the electorate when celebrities are perceived as more competent leaders than those running for the highest office in the land?

While these questions are certainly important, the answer as to the influence of Swift vs. Musk very well might come down to whether Swift decides to follow up their endorsement not with potentially illegal payments to voters but instead with more traditional support as Musk did on Oct. 10, in which he held a solo event in support of Trump in the Philadelphia suburbs, in the crucial state of Pennsylvania. The reaction to that was mixed; when asking the audience to register and vote for Trump he was met with shouts from the audience of "Why?" Of course the reaction might have been different at the time if he had offered to pay those in the audience

To date Swift has not campaigned for Harris and hasn’t publicly addressed the election since her endorsement in September. Whether she decides to do so could be crucial to the election, especially since Swift is from Reading, Pennsylvania. Although she hasn’t announced her intentions, the opportunity still exists since she’ll be on stage several times before the election and doing so without the offer of paying voters would offer voters a stark contrast to what appears to be the illegal use of celebrity status by Musk.

However, the Democratic Party is not waiting, with the launch of a Swift-themed “I Will Vote” campaign across Florida and other battleground states. This campaign has Snapchat filters and advertisements directing Swifties and others to IWillVote.com, which provides information about voting, registration and other questions young people may have about the election.

The jury is still out on whether Taylor Swift will be the biggest election influencer of them all.