strategery: A content analysis of political sketches

during election years on saturday night live, 1976-2012

Marianna Woodruff, Harding University
Introduction
Saturday Night Live is known for its
parody of prominent political figures.
From Jimmy Carter to Sarah Palin, from
George Bush to George W. Bush, SNL
focuses largely on politicians during
election years.
Saturday Night Live takes current
events and transforms them into
relatable occurrences through the
act of parody. The cast members on
the show go to great lengths to create
sketches that accurately portray the
people their characters are based on.
Stemming off that accuracy, they find
ways to embellish and dramatize these
people, making themselves into living
caricatures.
In this study, I searched through the last
40 seasons of Saturday Night Live,
taking a tally of how many episodes per
season contain political sketches during
election year seasons. I also looked
at which political parties were most
targeted and how many cold opens were
political in nature from 1976 to 2012.

m e t h o d
Content Analysis: A systematic coding
and categorizing approach used for
exploring large amounts of textual
information unobtrusively to determine
trends and patterns of words used,
their frequency, their relationships,
and the structures and discourses of
communication (Vaismoradi, Turunen
and Bondas, 400).

Percentage of Political Sketches Featured as

Cold Opens during Election Years,
1976-2012

The study concluded that the most

political cold opens occured in the
2000s, with the most in one season
occuring in the 2008 election year.

1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
Episodes without Political Cold
Opens

Percentage of Sketches that Target Political Parties during

Election Years, 1976-2012
8%

10%

Data Collection: Coded 195 episodes in

seasons 2 (1976-1977), 6 (1980-1981),
10 (1984-1985), 14 (1988-1989), 18
(1992-1993), 22 (1996-1997), 26 (20002001), 30 (2004-2005), 34 (2008-2009)
and 38 (2012-2013) of Saturday Night
Live.
Quantitative Variables: Three units of
analysis were coded: (1)political parties
that were targeted in each sketch, (2)
how many political sketches were
featured as a cold open and (3) how
many episodes in each season featured
political sketches.
Time Frame: 10 days during April 2015
with one season coded per day.
Instruments: HP Laptop, snltranscripts.
org and tv.com.

42%

Democrats
Republicans
Republicans and Democrats
Independent

40%

Percentage of Episodes Featuring

Political Sketches during Election
Years, 1976-2012
2000s
1980s

11%
20%
21%

48%

R e s u l t s

1990s
1970s

Throughout the 10 seasons examined

in this study, the Democratic party
was parodied more often than
the Republican party. Democrats
were targeted 42% of the time and
Republicans were targeted 40% of
the time. Since Saturday Night Live
has been on the air, there have been
three Democrat presidents and
three Republican presidents thus the
amount of parody about each political
party is near equal.
Out of 195 episodes in the 10 seasons
covered in this study, there were 129
episodes featuring at least one political
sketch. During seasons 26, 20, 34 and
38 in the 2000s, there were the most
episodes featuring political sketches.
62 episodes through those four
seasons featured political sketches.