Los Angeles:

A raft of celebrities from Taylor Swift and Beyonce to George Clooney and Harrison Ford proved unable to prevent Kamala Harris’s crushing defeat in the US election, underlining the limited impact of sweeping star endorsements on voters. 

Instead, it was Donald Trump and the Republicans — who received scant support from the entertainment industry at large, but tapped into a targeted subset of well-known, hypermasculine influencers — who won comfortably.

So, did the Democrats’ long-standing Hollywood and music industry connections, including last-minute rally appearances from Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, make any difference at all in the end?

“Not in this election, clearly,” said New York University arts professor Laurence Maslon.

“At the end of the day, people probably realize that Beyonce and George Clooney don’t have to worry about the cost of gas or the cost of eggs — so maybe they’re sort of irrelevant,” he told AFP.

Celebrity endorsements have long been part of the fabric of US elections, harking back to the days when Frank Sinatra wrangled the “Rat Pack” to support John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Even this year, Hollywood-led fundraisers helped raise tens of millions of dollars for Harris’s record-breaking campaign war chest.

But their impact in actually influencing votes has always been a “mixed bag,” said Arizona State University associate professor Margaretha Bentley, who teaches a public policy course on Taylor Swift.

“It’s never going to be the golden ticket that everybody’s looking for,” she said.

Mark Harvey, author of “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy,” agreed that we “shouldn’t be terribly surprised” by the lack of celebrity impact.

“There isn’t a real strong science behind this idea that celebrities can influence people to vote for candidates,” he said.

– ‘Macho’ –
Famous supporters have only ever been effective when advocating on very specific issues on which they are widely regarded as expert, added Harvey.

As Donald Trump delivered his victory speech early Wednesday, the new president-elect was flanked by — and showered praise on — famous names from the world of sport.

UFC boss Dana White was lovingly hailed as “tough” and “a piece of work,” while golfer Bryson DeChambeau was celebrated as “fantastic” and even having a “slightly longer” drive than the golf-loving Trump.

Loud cheers — and a significant portion of Trump’s address — were devoted to his best-known supporter of all, tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump also received a last-minute endorsement from Joe Rogan, the influential host of one of the world’s top podcasts.

The Republican may have benefited from these associations because, in an election “largely driven by cultural issues, one of the most potent cultural issues was masculinity,” said Harvey. 

“This sort of ‘be a real man,’ the Trump ‘macho’ sort of thing… it’s the kind of thing that Joe Rogan plays all the time.”

– ‘Shocked’ –
For the Democrats, this latest scarring experience will require a “deep self-analysis… of what they did and didn’t do, and what might have been successful,” including with celebrity endorsements, said Bentley. 

Ashley Spillane, author of the report “Celebrities Strengthening Our Culture of Democracy,” agreed there was “debate” about the “value and impact of celebrity endorsements of candidates.”

But there is still “robust evidence that celebrities do have a real impact in promoting overall, nonpartisan civic engagement,” she wrote via email, pointing to Swift’s endorsement of Harris, which was credited with driving 400,000 people to a voter registration site.

Even if their endorsements failed, Hollywood celebrities showed no indication Wednesday that they would remain silent.

Waking up to the news of Trump’s victory, several well-known figures took to social media to vent their frustrations.

Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis said Trump’s win would usher in “a sure return to a more restrictive, some fear draconian time.”

“Fascist with total power… That may have been the last free election,” wrote actor John Cusack. “Horror is coming.”

Pop singer Cardi B, who appeared at a Harris rally last Friday, simply wrote: “I hate yall bad.” 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The seal on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is seen June 9, 2023, in Washington. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The FBI warned of bomb threats at polling stations in “multiple” U.S. states on a tense Election Day, adding that none were credible, but many appeared to originate from Russia.

In one area of battleground state Georgia, police reported 32 bomb threats made against voting sites, some of which briefly suspended operations while authorities checked for explosives.

Also Read: U.S. Elections 2024 voting LIVE: Donald Trump wins Florida, leads over Kamala Harris as early polls close

The 2024 U.S. presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day has been ramped up given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery and violence against poll workers.

“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains,” spokeswoman Savannah Syms said in a statement.

“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” she added, urging the public to “remain vigilant.”

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the state had identified Russia as the source of bomb threats, without elaborating

32 polling stations in Georgia’s Fulton County – which includes the state’s largest city Atlanta — were among those facing threats, County Police Chief Wade Yate told reporters.

He added that five sites were briefly closed while authorities checked for explosives but found nothing.

“None of the polling places were closed for more than 30 minutes,” South Fulton’s Mayor Kobi told AFP outside one of them – Feldwood Elementary School, in South Fulton.

“There are some people who are trying to discourage people in South Fulton from voting, but we are the Blackest city in the United States,” he said.

“We are the descendants of, the sons and daughters of people who faced lynch mobs, water cannon… to exercise the right to vote. And so, we aren’t going to let bomb threats turn us around.”

‘Smelled like fuel’

With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they have also bolstered physical security for election operations nationwide.

Poll workers have been given panic buttons, special weapons teams have been deployed on rooftops and hundreds of National Guard personnel have been placed on standby.

The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week.

The U.S. Capitol Police, who protect the seat of Congress in Washington, arrested a man on Tuesday (November 5, 2024) who “smelled like fuel” and was carrying a lighter and accelerant.

He was stopped at the Capitol visitor centre – part of the complex that was stormed by Mr. Trump supporters in a deadly riot on January 6, 2021, as they sought to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.

Police Chief J. Thomas Manger later told a press conference that the man had “papers” he intended to deliver to Congress and that it was unclear if he was planning to light himself on fire.

“There’s no indication, right now, that it had anything to do with the election,” he said.

The bomb threats were not the first time U.S. authorities have pointed the finger at Russian interference during the vote.

Hours before polls opened, officials warned that Russia-linked disinformation operations had falsely claimed attempts were being made in battleground states to fraudulently sway the outcome of the election.

On Tuesday (November 6, 2024), U.S. stocks rallied as voters headed to the polls on the last day of the presidential election and as more data piled up showing the economy remains solid.

The S&P 500 rose 1.2% to pull closer to its record set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 427 points, or 1%, while the Nasdaq composite gained 1.4%.

Also Read: U.S. Elections 2024 voting LIVE: Donald Trump wins Florida, leads over Kamala Harris as early polls close

The market’s main event was the election, even if the result may not be known for days or weeks as officials count all the votes. Such uncertainty could upset markets, along with an upcoming meeting by the Federal Reserve on interest rates later this week. The widespread expectation is for it to cut its main interest rate for a second straight time.

Investors have already made moves in anticipation of a win by either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. But Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, suggests not getting caught up in such pre-election moves, or even those immediately after the polls close, “which we believe will face inevitable tempering, if not outright reversals, either before or after Inauguration Day.”

The Dow and S&P 500 futures were up slightly, while the Nasdaq futures were unchanged as of 7:27 p.m. Eastern time, as several states on the East Coast closed polls and early returns began coming in.

In Asia, some benchmarks were moving higher in early trading Wednesday (November 7, 2024). The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo was 0.7% higher, while the Kospi in Seoul was up 0.5%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.8%.

Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind the former president’s Truth Social platform, tumbled 20% in after-hours trading. It closed 1.2% lower during the regular session, when trading in the stock was halted multiple times due to volatility. The stock, which tends to move more with Mr. Trump’s re-election odds than on its own profit prospects, rallied strongly last month.

Despite all the uncertainty heading into the final day of voting, many professional investors suggest keeping the focus on the long term. The broad U.S. stock market has historically tended to rise regardless of which party wins the White House, even if each party’s policies can help and hurt different industries’ profits.

Since 1945, the S&P 500 has risen in 73% of the years where a Democrat was president and 70% of the years when a Republican was the nation’s chief executive, according to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.

The U.S. stock market has risen more in magnitude when Democrats have been president, in part because a loss under George W. Bush’s term hurt the Republicans’ average. Mr. Bush took over as the dot-com bubble was deflating and exited office when the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession were devastating markets.

Besides whom will be president, other questions hanging over the market include whether the White House will be working with a unified Congress or one split by political parties, as well as whether the results will be contested.

The general hope among investors is often for split control of the U.S. government because that’s more likely to keep the status quo and avoid big changes that could drive the nation’s debt much, much higher.

As for a contested election, Wall Street has some precedent to look back to. In 2000, the S&P 500 dropped 5% in about five weeks after Election Day before Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush. That, though, also happened during the near-halving of the S&P 500 from March 2000 to October 2002 as the dot-com bubble deflated.

Four years ago, the S&P 500 rose the day after polls closed, even though a winner wasn’t yet clear. And it kept going higher after Mr. Trump refused to concede and challenged the results, which created plenty of uncertainty. A large part of that rally was due to excitement about the potential for a vaccine for COVID-19, which had just shut down the global economy.

The S&P 500 ended up rising 69.6% from Election Day 2020 through Monday (November 5, 2024), following President Joe Biden’s win. It rallied to records as the U.S. economy bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic and managed to avoid a recession despite a jump in inflation.

In the four years before that, the S&P 500 rose 57.5% from Election Day 2016 through Election Day 2020, in part because of cuts to tax rates signed by Mr. Trump.

On Tuesday (November 6, 2024), excitement about the artificial-intelligence boom helped lift Wall Street following a strong profit report from Palantir Technologies. So did a report showing growth accelerated last month for U.S. services businesses, beating economists’ expectations for a slowdown.

The Institute for Supply Management said it was the strongest growth in more than two years. The report offered more hope that the U.S. economy will remain solid and avoid a long-feared recession following the worst inflation in generations.

Palantir jumped 23.5%. CEO Alexander Karp said, “We absolutely eviscerated this quarter, driven by unrelenting AI demand that won’t slow down.”

All told, the S&P 500 rose 70.07 points to 5,782.76 on Tuesday (November 6, 2024). The Dow gained 427.28 to 42,221.88, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 259.19 to 18,439.17.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.28% from 4.29% late Monday (November 5, 2024).