The Irrelevance of “Peak Fame” on Celebrity Candidate Success

ABSTRACT Objective Does it matter “when” a celebrity runs for office? The political scientists who study celebrity candidates need to consider an important insight from communications and media scholars. Fame is a time‐dependent variable. Someone who was famous 40 years ago may no longer be widely known today. Methods A list of celebrity political candidates who ran for office in the United States between 1865 and 2022 was created to measure campaign success. Results In terms of winning an election, it does not matter whether a celebrity candidate runs at the peak of their fame or waits until decades later. What does matter is how famous they are at the time they run for office. Conclusions A‐ and B‐list celebrities are more electorally successful than C‐list celebrities so long as their ranking tracks their level of fame over time. Future research on this topic needs to account for the ephemeral nature of fame.