Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Stronger’ Actually Fell In Sales After Ron Paul Endorsement

Becky Bain | January 5, 2012 4:08 pm

The sales impact of Kelly Clarkson’s controversial endorsement of Republican candidate Ron Paul has led to its own controversy. Although several sites (yep, including us) reported that Kelly’s digital sales saw a sales bump after she posted pro Paul sentiments on Twitter, Billboard claims that Kelly’s album Stronger actually declined in overall sales in the week following her comments.

According to Billboard, which gathered its information from Nielsen SoundScan data and “sources in the know at Clarkson’s label, RCA”:

Stronger sold 40% fewer copies than it did the previous week (25,000, as opposed to 41,000 in the week before Christmas). And while it moved from No. 39 to No. 17 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, its upward momentum this week was caused by it having a less-steep decline in sales as compared to the rest of the titles on the chart (the overall album market was down 49% in the week after Christmas). Its total sales stand at 451,000 after 10 weeks.”

As far as the increase of digital sales, Billboard believes that it was the promotion of Kelly’s LP on the front page of iTunes and the lowered $7.99 price on both Amazon and iTunes that caused her sales on those outlets to go up, not pop-music-loving Republicans’ support of her endorsement of Ron Paul.

The lesson from this story? There’s no point just yet for Beyonce to slap a Rick Santorum bumper sticker on her car to boost sales of 4.