Americans were warming up to the idea of a President West — that is, until he actually announced his candidacy.

Kanye West’s presidential run is not going over well with voters — or at least, not with the voters on Ranker.com. Since announcing his candidacy on July 4, the rapper and producer has taken a huge dive on our list of Celebrities Who Should Run for President. Kanye sits at #109, with more than 2,000 downvotes and fewer than 500 upvotes. Polling at 19%, especially on a list filled with people who aren’t actually running for president, is not a great sign for the West 2020 campaign.

West was already a divisive figure when he announced his support for President Trump, and now that he’s renounced his support while mounting a campaign that some worry will take votes away from presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden, he’s managed to alienate voters on both sides of the aisle. Combine that with the alarming tweets West posted later in July, and it’s hard to imagine many people being comforted by the idea of a West White House. What’s more surprising is how high up West was on this list until very recently in spite of his controversial status, and how much lower on the list he could be today.

Kanye was actually lower on the list of potential celebrity candidates in 2018. The outspoken musician and fashion designer hit his low point around the same time that he made an appearance at the White House wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat on October 11, sinking to #144 a few weeks later. But his political potential made a huge upswing after he made a rather unpolitical announcement — he would be releasing Jesus Is King, his ninth studio album, on September 27.

The announcement sent him on an upward trajectory on our list, landing him at #70 by the time the album was supposed to be released. West’s failure to meet this self-imposed deadline set him back slightly, but the extended hype cycle only gave him more time to climb our list of potential celebrity candidates. By the time Jesus Is King was actually released the following month, West was all the way up at #26. He continued to rise up in the months following the album, despite middling reviews, getting as high as #13 in May 2020.

NOTE: This graph maps the position of Kanye West on our Celebrities Who Should Run for President list. Keep in mind that the graph is a little counterintuitive, as a trend upward in this line actually indicates that West has gone down on the list (because the most favored candidate is at #1). For example, though the line graph goes up from 2017 through most of 2019, it means that Kanye actually went down on our list during that period. A line trending upward means Kanye is becoming a less appealing presidential candidate, while a line trending downward means his candidacy is becoming more popular. Get it? Got it? Good.

It was only when Kanye actually announced he would run that voters started to turn sour on his prospects as a politician. It seems that the idea of a President West is charming to many people, but voters seem to run in the opposite direction whenever the idea threatens to turn into reality.

Still, #125 is not very low on a list of 256 celebrities. Even though West’s candidacy appeals to fewer than one in five Ranker voters, he’s still in the top 50% of the list overall.

That makes sense when you look at the vote totals for everyone else on the list. Everyone in the Top 5 (save for Tom Hanks) has more downvotes than upvotes, and for many of them, it’s not even close. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, for instance, is #5 on the list, but has only 41% approval from voters. In other words, Kanye was able to do relatively well because people seem overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of virtually every celebrity who might conceivably run for president.

That could mean a lot of things, depending on your perspective. It could mean that the rise of President Trump has people down on the celebrity-to-politician pipeline. Or it could be that Americans are so cynical about politicians generally that the idea of any public figure becoming one makes them highly suspicious. All we can say for sure is that the best thing West can do for his presidential campaign right now is say nothing about it at all.

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com, or email us at insights@ranker.com.

Kanye 2020? Not if Ranker Voters Can Help It.

Americans were warming up to the idea of a President West — that is, until he actually announced his candidacy.

It was only when Kanye actually announced he would run that voters started to turn sour on his prospects as a politician. It seems that the idea of a President West is charming to many people, but voters seem to run in the opposite direction whenever the idea threatens to turn into reality.

Still, #125 is not very low on a list of 256 celebrities. Even though West’s candidacy appeals to fewer than one in five Ranker voters, he’s still in the top 50% of the list overall.

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Kanye 2020? Not if Ranker Voters Can Help It.

Americans were warming up to the idea of a President West — that is, until he actually announced his candidacy.

It was only when Kanye actually announced he would run that voters started to turn sour on his prospects as a politician. It seems that the idea of a President West is charming to many people, but voters seem to run in the opposite direction whenever the idea threatens to turn into reality.

Still, #125 is not very low on a list of 256 celebrities. Even though West’s candidacy appeals to fewer than one in five Ranker voters, he’s still in the top 50% of the list overall.

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