The Role of Celebrity Endorsements in Politics: Oprah, Obama, and the 2008 Democratic Primary

Candidates in major political contests are commonly endorsed by other politicians, interest groups and celebrities. Prior to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, Barack Obama was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, a celebrity with a proven track record of influencing her fans’ commercial decisions. In this paper, we use geographic differences in subscriptions to O! – The Oprah Magazine and the sale of books Winfrey recommended as part of Oprah's Book Club to assess whether her endorsement affected the Primary outcomes. We find her endorsement had a positive effect on the votes Obama received, increased the overall voter participation rate, and increased the number of contributions received by Obama. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah's influence and Obama's success in previous elections, nor with underlying local political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately 1,000,000 additional votes for Obama. JEL Classification Numbers: D7; D72 We are grateful to Bill Evans for his comments and guidance. We also would like to thank Kerwin Charles, Allan Drazen, Mark Duggan, Kyle Handley, Judy Hellerstein, Dan Hungerman, Melissa Kearney, Brian Knight, Sebastian Miller and seminar participants at the University of Maryland for useful suggestions. For access to their data, we thank the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Mediamark Research and Intelligence and Jim King at Nielsen BookScan. All errors remain our own.