The Politics of Entertainment Media: How "The Apprentice" Helped Trump in 2016

When Donald Trump was a political newcomer and perceived longshot in the Republican Presidential Primary in 2016, he received a boost from an unlikely source, his starring role in the reality TV show, The Apprentice.

In “The American Viewer: Political Consequences of Entertainment Media,” a paper published in American Political Science Review on August 2, 2024, Columbia University’s Eunji Kim (Ph.D. '19) and Shawn Patterson Jr., Research Analyst for the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, demonstrate that the image Trump cultivated as the host of that show increased his vote share in the 2016 Republican primary – and that “apolitical” entertainment media can have important political consequences.

Americans watch a lot of television, and researchers have long wondered about the political consequences of this activity. But most prior work has explored the effects of news media on politics. Kim and Patterson argue that entertainment media can create opportunities for political candidates to build (one-sided) personal bonds with voters, both because Americans consume more entertainment than news, and because entertainment media can provide uncontested “one-sided information flows” about a candidate’s qualities.

The authors illustrate how this worked for Donald Trump. On The Apprentice, which aired between 2003 and 2015 and had more than 20 million viewers at its peak, contestants competed for a chance to run one of Trump’s companies.

In the show, Trump was presented, Kim and Patterson write, as "‘America’s Boss’ – a successful businessman; a savvy negotiator; a tough, but supportive mentor; adept at reaching profitable deals in high-pressure situations.” Using multiple data sources that include surveys of voters, transcripts from the program, Nelsen ratings data, and election returns, the authors show that exposure to The Apprentice helped Trump gain votes in the 2016 Republican Primary Elections.

“Granted, no single piece of evidence is an ideal test of our hypothesis, but taken together, the evidence suggests that Donald Trump’s role as “America’s Boss” on The Apprentice provided him with the public credibility necessary to secure an advantage in the Republican nomination in 2016,” said Patterson.

In Trump’s case, the authors write, “The Apprentice allowed Trump to build a reputation that would bear fruit for his nascent political career through the ties he established with the viewers/future voters. By providing a deluge of uncontested, seemingly apolitical considerations, entertainment media provides a unique route into the public consciousness.” They conclude: “Our findings here serve as a sober reminder that the study of the American voter can’t be removed from the study of the American viewer.”

“It is worth putting these findings in a global context,” notes Kim, who received her Ph.D. from Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication in 2019. “From Silvio Berlusconi to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, many consequential world leaders have leveraged entertainment media to build their political careers.”

“The American Viewer: Political Consequences of Entertainment Media” was published in American Political Science Review.