Not all political comedy is equal ' how comics can either depress turnout or activate voters in 2024
Jokes that focus on physical traits ' fat bellies, bald heads, bumbling speech ' foster negative candidate views that can exhaust voters, as does mocking scandals, whether it's the mishandling of classified documents, sexual misconduct or family drama. There was record turnout during the 2020 election. Nearly two-thirds of eligible voters cast a vote, 7 percentage points higher than in 2016. However, recent polling data suggests that 2024 may be different, with 38% of voters saying they were already exhausted at the prospect of another matchup between Trump and Biden. Political comedy is complex and highly varied, but it can be divided roughly into two camps: mockery and satire. Mocking comedy tends to negatively affect political participation in two ways. It can create negative views of candidates, and this, in turn, can lead to voter apathy. Communications professor S. Robert Lichter and political scientists Jody C. Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris surveyed years of joke data in...
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