Saturday Night Live Provides Humor to Historical Presidential Race

The last presidential election skit on “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) aired last Saturday, November 5, three days before election day. Throughout the election, Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon have acted as the two main nominees for president, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

This last skit was a mock of a CNN interview hosted by Erin Burnett (played by Cecily Strong). The main subject of the interview was Clinton’s emails, with Clinton trying to draw the attention away from her emails and towards Trump. The skit included Trump kissing an FBI agent, Putin, and a Klansman, but the attention remained on Clinton’s emails. The two finally break character and run out of the studio, holding hands through Times Square. The camera shows McKinnon (as Hillary) hugging Trump supporters on the street and Baldwin (as Trump) hugging an African American and a Mexican family.

Throughout this election, SNL has provided humor to this historic presidential election. It may even influence the actual election. An article written by Martha Sorren on bustle.com says that this happened in the 2008 presidential election. “According to PR News Wire, after conducting a survey of 1000 voters, FirstView (a national public opinion survey released by Roll Call) found that “10 percent of voters said they were influenced by the skits.” Of that group, “Six percent of respondents indicated the skits made them more likely to vote for Obama/Biden and four percent said the SNL skits made them more likely to vote for McCain/Palin” (Sorren). If these numbers stay true to the 2016 election, “Saturday Night Live” may have influenced it.