Have Elon Musk and Taylor Swift taken the place of the Gray Lady?

In 1860, The New York Times weighed in on the upcoming presidential election, endorsing rail-splitter Abraham Lincoln despite the “large class of men who have a vague but real apprehension that something terrible is to follow the election of a Republican President.”
It was the Times’ first endorsement of a presidential candidate and led to a widespread practice that, until recently, held considerable influence over the electorate. One researcher who studied newspaper endorsements between 1960 and 1980 found that endorsements caused “a large, significant change in readers’ preferred candidate” and were effective for both Republicans and Democrats who won the endorsement. In Steven Sprick Schuster’s report in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization last year, he noted that “over the 5 elections covered in my sample, U.S. newspapers shifted more than 17 million voters toward Republican candidates.”
But the number of newspapers is declining — about a third have shut down since 2005 — and those still in business are increasingly choosing not to endorse candidates. The New York Times made headlines last week by announcing that the editorial board would no longer endorse candidates in state races, although its editorial board will continue making endorsements in presidential elections. The Times’ article about the change noted that Alden Global Capital announced two years ago that its 200 newspapers would stop endorsing candidates for president, Senate and governor. The Deseret News weighs in on issues but has historically (and currently) chosen not to endorse candidates. And still other newspapers have decided that they will only do endorsements if they are able to meet with the candidates in person, which in some markets, effectively ends the practice in a presidential race.
But as the influence of a newspaper’s editorial board declines, other voices have stepped up in the space.
Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the U.S., with more than 14 million subscribers, has praised independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., although he has said his comments were not intended to be a formal endorsement. Elon Musk has said he “fully” endorses Donald Trump. Talk show hosts like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver wield political influence in ways that their predecessors didn’t just a few decades ago. And even celebrity voices have cache — just look at Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020 and George Clooney’s New York Times op-ed calling for Joe Biden to step aside.
The number of people whose votes they may sway, however, may be relatively small. According to Pew Research Center, most Americans voted a straight-party ticket in 2016 and 2020. And although more independents say they are undecided in the aftermath of Kamala Harris becoming the Democrats’ nominee, most Americans say they’ve already decided who they will vote for in November; prior to Joe Biden dropping out of the race, that number had reached 72%.
Then again, as tight as the race stands to be, a relatively small number of voters changing their mind could upend the race in ways that polls and analysts can’t predict. What — or who — could facilitate a November surprise?
Kevin DuLuca, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University who studies the media and politics, said there are a number of factors that contribute to the decline in newspaper endorsements, including the rise of cable news channels, which has contributed to a “crowding-out effect.”
While the Times did not say say why it was ending endorsements in state races, “My understanding is that newspapers in general, and the companies in general, see (endorsements) as economic liabilities. They are a way to make their readers mad and in a worst-case scenario, cancel their subscriptions.”
As an example, DeLuca noted that The Arizona Republic, which had endorsed Republicans for president for more than a century, endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. The backlash was such that the editors announced four years later that the newspaper would no longer make endorsements, writing “Readers have made it clear: You want to be informed about elections but not told how to vote.”
Further, DeLuca noted that many people don’t make the distinction between editorial boards and newsrooms, which are separate, but even editorial board endorsements can “make the newspaper seem partisan.” And large companies that own newspapers, in particular, may think endorsements are “not worth losing money over.”
But DeLuca, who has studied newspaper endorsements and found they had a “small but statistically significant effect” on elections, believes that their loss leaves a void, more so in local and state races. Historically, editorial boards at local newspapers would meet with candidates and grill them about their positions on issues that affect the community before writing an endorsement. Sometimes candidates would also be asked to fill out extensive questionnaires. The idea was that the members of the board, which typically comprise newspaper leadership and opinion writers, acted on behalf of their readers, asking the sorts of questions that citizens would if they had access to the politicians for a couple of hours.
This was particularly effective in local races, when a person might not know anything about the people running or the local ballot initiatives. Without the benefit of thoughtful endorsements, voters may be more likely to just vote along party lines. “This leads to, in political science we call it the nationalization of politics, where all the local election results start to mirror the top-of-the-ticket presidential voting patterns,” DeLuca said.
He said he also suspects that office holders behave differently when they don’t have to seek endorsements. Members of Congress, in particular, may be more likely to court national attention and approval, and less likely to care about what the people back home think. “It changes the incentives for politicians to try to appeal to their specific geographic constituency.”
All in all, he said, “I think it’s bad that newspapers have kind of given up on doing this hard thing.”
However, there’s also an argument to be made that in the current environment, where public trust in journalism has sunk to record lows, the loss of endorsements were inevitable.
They are no longer effective, Steven Sprick Schuster, the associate professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University who studies endorsements, told me. “They don’t hold the imagination the way they used to. Part of that is because a lot of cities just have one paper and it’s hard for them to say ‘we are your lone source of unbiased news, but oh, yeah, vote Democrat.’”
DeLuca doesn’t think that the endorsement of any other group or individual can fill the void that newspaper endorsements left, but others are trying. Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump in a post on X after Trump was shot and this week aired a two-hour conversation with the former president on X. Dennis Quaid, the actor who stars in the upcoming movie about Ronald Reagan, has also endorsed Trump.
Meanwhile, comedian Bill Maher, who is touring this fall and has a popular talk show on HBO, has said he will “do everything I can to make sure” Trump doesn’t win the White House again.
And Joe Rogan angered Trump fans when he said of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his podcast, “He’s the only one that makes sense to me.” He later seemed to walk that back, writing on X, “For the record, this isn’t an endorsement.”
There was no walking back, however, when Oprah Winfrey endorsed Barack Obama in 2007 and when Taylor Swift endorsed Biden in 2020. Researchers who studied the effect of Winfrey’s endorsement believe that it was responsible for more than a million votes for Obama and increased not just the share of the vote, but also campaign contributions. But it’s unclear how much endorsements matter in the political environment today, and the circumstances matter.
“Endorsements that aren’t surprising aren’t very effective,” Sprick Schuster told me.
In the case of Winfrey, there was an element of surprise, because she had previously refrained from talking about politics. “That was a break,” he said. Swift has so far declined to endorse in the 2024 election, but people already know where she stands politically, so it’s unclear if a new statement would matter.
Members of his generation — at 41, Sprick Schuster describes himself as an “elder millennial” — can barely conceive of their parents’ and grandparents’ experience of growing up in places that had both morning and afternoon newspapers that led robust public debate about candidates and elections.
But to many people today, the newspaper endorsement feels “weird,” he said, “somewhat vestigial.” In a way, Sprick Schuster said, it has “outlived its usefulness.”
For many people who spend a lot of time on online, a social media feed has replaced the local newspaper and its journalists’ voices. As an example, he pointed to Andrew Huberman, the Stanford professor who has a popular podcast about science and health; if someone like Huberman, who doesn’t talk about politics, suddenly came out with an endorsement, it might make people pay attention.
But DeLuca, at Yale, said there’s a limit to how even new-media celebrities could move the needle in November, if at all. “Even if the Elon Musk endorsement has a small effect on some of the people, and Taylor Swift has a small effect on some other people, at the end of the day, it’s like a lot of horses pushing in opposite directions. It kind of cancels (each other) out.”