Two fainting audience members abruptly interrupted Donald Trump’s recent overheated town hall in Pennsylvania. In response, Trump suddenly and surprisingly shifted from a Q&A format to a low-key dance party.
“Let’s not do any more questions,” Trump said. “Let’s just listen to music.”
This spontaneous decision may be unprecedented in campaign history, but the careful and strategic curation and deployment of playlists at campaign events is not.
Barack Obama famously walked on stage to U2’s “City of Blinding Light.” His rhythmic chants of “Yes we can” flowed seamlessly into Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.”
Bill Clinton, through the music of Fleetwood Mac, told people, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
In the current campaign, Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris prompted her to play the feminist anthem, “The Man” at her rallies as she exited the stage. Donald Trump, in a perfect split-screen contrast, prefers James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.”
What difference does the music actually make at these rallies? We intuitively know that the mood would be quite different if no music were played at all. But does the music serve another purpose? Does it affect the way people feel about candidates?
Based on psychological studies I performed during the 2016 election, the presence or absence of music makes a significant difference in the way people perceive political candidates.
In an unpublished 2016 study, I investigated whether campaign music affects how more than 300 participants felt about the two presidential candidates at the time, Hillary Clinton and Trump.
Control groups were randomly shown two minutes of Trump’s or Clinton’s convention speeches without the entry and exit music they selected for the event. The experimental groups watched the same footage, only with the entry and exit music included.
The Clinton campaign chose “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten, and the Trump campaign chose “Nessun Dorma,” a Puccini aria, sung by Luciano Pavarotti.
Each participant was asked several questions including whether the candidate “understands the needs of people like you,” whether they were honest, if they were perceived as a celebrity and how credible the candidates were on certain policy issues.
In nearly every case, participants exposed to the campaign music were more likely to feel that Clinton or Trump “understands the needs of people like you,” compared to those who heard no music with the speeches. Irrespective of their party affiliation, respondents who watched Clinton walk in to “Fight Song” perceived her as more credible on environmental issues.
There were some partisan variations. Democrats who watched Trump’s speech with the “Nessun Dorma” intro were less likely to believe that he understood their needs and more likely to think he was dishonest. Democrats who watched the Clinton speech with music saw her as more credible on the Cuban embargo, debt relief to the developing world, and environmental issues.
Republicans who watched Trump’s speech with music were more likely to perceive Trump as a celebrity, but there was no positive effect on Trump’s credibility on any policy issues. The music did, however, damage Clinton’s credibility with them on capital punishment, the Cuban embargo, income inequality, same-sex marriage, and the Syrian crisis.
Independents who watched Trump’s speech with music thought Clinton was less credible on capital punishment, income inequality and marijuana legalization. Even Democratic viewers found her less credible on the Cuban embargo, genocide in Darfur and same-sex marriage.
All campaigns are different. Despite the fact that this is a presidential campaign and one of the candidates is the same as in 2016, comparisons between the 2016 campaign and the 2024 campaign should not be overdrawn.
At the very least, this study predicts that Trump’s and Harris’s carefully chosen entry and exit music will affect how their audiences feel, and that this effect likely transcends the event itself. Even people who watch a video of the event are more likely to be affected if it is accompanied by music.
Music makes candidates more relatable and possibly more credible across a range of issues. Conversely, music also makes their opponent seem less credible.
Why respondents felt more negative about Clinton during Trump’s speech, but not more positive about him is unknown. But it does illustrate how music can tap into a torrent of emotions — both positive and negative. Democrats not only felt negative about Clinton but also about Trump in this case.
One might have expected music to have little or no effect, considering that Trump and Clinton were the least popular candidates in U.S. history to date and had nearly 100 percent name recognition, with voter attitudes largely fixed and very few voters undecided.
Likewise, one would not expect music to change people’s attitudes about a candidate’s perceived credibility on specific issues, given the lack of connection between the context of the songs and political issues in general.
However, the results of this experiment are consistent with previous findings on the power of music.
We know that the tone and style of music — and even the presence or absence of music — can affect people’s feelings in documentaries and films. Music binds social groups together and draws symbolic lines between them, separating one identity group from another. Its qualities enable music and musicians to bind their audiences emotionally and even legitimize political causes when the music is played or performed live.
Music has also been used as a form of worship, entertainment and propaganda to psychologically control the masses, causing some governments to ban forms of music that they have found threatening.
Given what we know about the power of music, perhaps Trump’s spontaneous decision to start rocking out was not a bad one. Perhaps the music tied his audience to him more tightly than his verbal answers could have.
With both sides scrounging for votes in a dead-heat election, perhaps the right music might sway just enough votes to make a difference.
Mark Harvey is an associate professor and director of Graduate Business Programs at the University of Saint Mary. He is the author of “Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy.”
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