Voters polled about female celebrities
Well-known women have not crossed into politics
Before Donald Trump was a president, he was a television celebrity and highprofile real estate mogul. His political experience, or lack thereof, was touted on the campaign trail eight years ago as a fresh presence in Washington.
A few other men have garnered celebrity status before they ventured into politics. Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger were all toughguy film stars long before they ran for president, mayor and governor respectively. Al Franken got people laughing on Saturday Night Live before serving as a Minnesota Senator.
But no woman has transitioned from stardom to high public office.
To better understand why and which famous female might be able to make the shift, Suffolk University and USA TODAY conducted an exclusive poll of 1,000 likely voters.
Three celebrity women would win the backing of nearly 30% of those polled: TV personality Oprah Winfrey, actor Sandra Bullock and 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams. Actresses Viola Davis and Julia Roberts and comedian Tina Fey each earned the support of about a quarter of those surveyed, with Whoopi Goldberg, Jodie Foster and Rachel Maddow not too far behind.
But other high-profile women didn’t win a lot of support and for many, running for office would be a turnoff. Roughly three-quarters of those polled said they’d be less likely to support Beyoncé, Lady
Gaga or Jennifer Lopez if they made a bid for public office. Even more were against a run by Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian and Caitlyn Jenner.
The poll included 1,000 likely voters, but the list of 22 well-known women was split into two groups, with 500 people asked about 11 women each.
More than a quarter of respondents had no answer for why this might be. Of the rest, the most common explanations for the lack of female candidates were: sexism, that women were too smart to run for office and that not enough women were trying to run.
Even if a celebrity woman is liked, it’s not clear that she will be perceived as capable of doing the job, said Erin Loos Cutraro, founder and CEO of She Should Run, a nonpartisan group that works to increase the number of women running for public office.
“This is the reality of our system, there’s a double standard for women,” Cutraro said. “Men have a perceived and built-in assumption of qualification. If they can crack likeability, they’re well-positioned.”
Taylor Swift for president?
Take arguably one of the most influential celebrity women of the era, Taylor Swift. Respondents weren’t completely aligned on whether they would support her in a run for office, with 73% saying they were less likely to support her if she ran for office.
Women poll participants were more likely than men to support the pop star, while 28% of Democrats and only 4% of Republicans said they would likely support Swift on a ticket.
Someone like Swift may be able to make a bigger difference by spotlighting a specific issue or encouraging people to vote than by running for office themselves, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
More than 30,000 people registered to vote after Swift encouraged them to in a single Instagram post, for instance.
But recent history has raised questions over whether an apolitical person in a political role is the ticket voters seek.
Even mayors, like Michael Bloomberg in New York City, and business leaders like Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, had short-lived runs for president, with their celebrity shaping their campaign’s early notoriety.
“Donald Trump is clearly the exception to that rule,” Walsh said.
Why more visible women haven’t jumped into politics
There has been at least one woman in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1917 and in the Senate (with a few gap years) since 1921.
Only two women ran as major party candidates for vice president – Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, with Walter Mondale, in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin, with John McCain, in 2008 – before Kamala Harris succeeded in winning the post with President Joe Biden in 2020.
Presumptive Republican nominee Trump had promised at one point to choose a woman as his running mate. Last week, he suggested he would release the name in mid-July at the Republican National Convention.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ran a respectable attempt for president on the Republican side, Walsh said, crediting her for carefully “threading the needle” on abortion and other hot-button issues by addressing them directly, rather than avoiding them as many male candidates did.
But in the end, she wasn’t able to breach the threshold “a juggernaut of Donald Trump,” Walsh said. On the Democratic side, a woman might have entered the race if Biden had decided not to run, she said.
Women have to be seen as both likable and qualified
Well-known people stir interest in voters, Cutraro said. But no matter someone’s level of celebrity, the goal posts have to shift in order to guarantee successful women make it on to ballots.
“Women are hit with this reality they can often seem likable or they can seem qualified, but it’s challenging for women to be overwhelmingly seen as both,” Cutraro said. “Sometimes in the proving of qualifications they become less likeable.”