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Messi, Ronaldo, and the Politics of Celebrity Elections: Voting for the Best Soccer Player in the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Christopher J. Anderson Open the ORCID record for Christopher J. Anderson [Opens in a new window] ,
Luc Arrondel ,
André Blais ,
Jean-François Daoust ,
Jean-François Laslier Open the ORCID record for Jean-François Laslier [Opens in a new window]  and
Karine Van der Straeten
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Abstract

It is widely assumed that celebrities are imbued with political capital and the power to move opinion. To understand the sources of that capital in the specific domain of sports celebrity, we investigate the popularity of global soccer superstars. Specifically, we examine players’ success in the Ballon d’Or—the most high-profile contest to select the world’s best player. Based on historical election results as well as an original survey of soccer fans, we find that certain kinds of players are significantly more likely to win the Ballon d’Or. Moreover, we detect an increasing concentration of votes on these kinds of players over time, suggesting a clear and growing hierarchy in the competition for soccer celebrity. Further analyses of support for the world’s two best players in 2016 (Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo) show that, if properly adapted, political science concepts like partisanship have conceptual and empirical leverage in ostensibly non-political contests.

Type
Special Section: Celebrities and Politics
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 91 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2019 

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

*Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at::https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4QJW0V

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Anderson et al. Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4QJW0V
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