If 2016 proved anything to us, it’s that anyone could be President — so why not Oprah Winfrey in 2020? Her Q Score sure backs up the White House run Hollywood is clamoring for.
Oprah has a 23 Positive Q Score — an industry-accepted measurement of how well-liked a personality is — TheWrap has learned exclusively. That’s four points higher than the average for a performer, and it means 23 percent of polled Americans identified Winfrey as one of their favorite celebrities.
The OWN owner’s awareness level is humongous, at 86 percent. Or at least, it was during Summer 2017, which is the latest-available data set from the Q Scores Company. The group will be updating Winfrey’s stats later this month, with results available at the end of February. The upcoming findings should indicate any changes due to her popular Golden Globes speech Sunday night.
If women show up to vote, Winfrey could be a shoe-in. The former talk-show host’s appeal skews female, scoring a 24 Positive Q Score among women — that’s seven points higher than a 17 average for performers among females.
As Hollywood would probably agree these days, the problem here is men — especially older ones. Winfrey exhibits polarization among fellas 50+, with a Negative Q Score of 32 there. The same measurement drops down to a 22 among women of the same age.
Readers can think of a person’s “Negative Q Score” as the opposite of the Positive one — essentially, 32 percent of men over 50 said Winfrey was among their least-favorite personalities.
Even with that issue, assuming Trump automatically reruns for the 2020 Republican ticket, he’d have his (tiny?) hands full with Winfrey. The last time the Q Scores gang measured Trump was back in January 2015, when he had what company president Henry Schafer called “the typical love-to-hate profile”: 76 percent awareness, a 7 Positive Q Score and a 44 Negative Q Score.
Back then, Trump “was marketing himself [similarly] to the Kardashians, Howard Stern, etc.,” Schafer told TheWrap. “Clearly, Oprah doesn’t market herself that way, hence her more appealing profile.”
Once a celebrity moves into the political world, the Q Scores Company stops measuring them, hence the dated data for the ex-“Apprentice” host. And it also explains why Schafer may stop polling people about Oprah in a few years.